ASSCBS

[Wildfowler Lounge]

Can anyone tell me what happened and when to the Ardrossan, Saltcoats and Stevenston Cage Bird Society? I can't find any trace of it on the net, so I'm guessing that it folded before the net became popular.

Names I remember from the early '80s : Marshall Lambie (Corrie Crescent) President - a grand old man in every way and a champion breeder of Norwich canaries.
Honorary President - Dougie Gillespie (Hazel Avenue) - Champion breeder of Borders
John Kerr - Secretary, a hard-working electrician whose efforts seemed to hold the thing together for years. Bred Glosters.

[Wildfowler Lounge]

bump

[morag]

Hi Wildfowler,
I don't know anything about the ASSCBS, but my uncle, John O'Donnell, from Saltcoats was a breeder of budgies mostly, I think. He had an aviary attached to the hut in his back garden and knew all about birds and was very good with them. This would have been mostly in the 60's. I remember going to a bird show in Saltcoats, where exactly I'm not sure, but I think it was where they used to have the circus? He gave up the bird business when his aviary was broken into and the birds stolen, which didn't bother him so much as the injured, or worse, birds left behind

[Wildfowler Lounge]

There was a lot of that when I bred Borders in Ardrossan in the 80s; breeders were more afraid of the mutilation of their stock by sickos than of actual theft - most of us didn't have quality worth stealing. I remember a very sickening incident from the Herald where a guy had his pheasants beheaded in his garden in Saltcoats or Stevenston.

I didn't know your uncle, but in my time the annual show was in Saltcoats Town Hall (I still have the 1981 poster - can't be too many of them left) and the annual sale was in Laighdykes Pavilion, which is beside where the circus used to camp. Is that where you remember?

[morag]

I believe it was. I remember coming out the building and there was a big circular patch of unhealthy looking grass. I found a half crown!
I believe that was also where we had local contests be it for girl guides, scouts, whatever. One year we were all there making Welsh Rarebit, glorified cheese toast with sliced tomato atop in this case. I don't remember any winners being called, just the judges munching their way happily along!