Abstract
Having a bird garden in southern California was one thing; trying to raise the same birds in "super, natural British Columbia'' - even on the Sunshine Coast - was an entirely different matter. We knew we had to make some drastic changes when I began having nightmares about bird seed. Sacks of sunflower seed vied for space with finch mix in each of two bedrooms. Getting into the broom closet past the various pails and boxes of mixed seed was virtually impossible. The bathroom shelves stocked - not tooth paste or face cream, but jars, bottles, boxes of avian vitamins, minerals, tonics and moulting powders. The kitchen counter overflowed with nestling mixes and egg food.
In the living room every conceivable surface held a cage of some sort. Two huge dog cages wired together took up six feet of valuable floor space right in the middle of it all, while two African Greys growled at all who passed. Meal worm beetles navigated the house; the confused flour beetle proved not to be so confused after all; fruit flies refused to stay wingless and hovered everywhere. Since this was reality it shouldn't be hard to imagine what the nightmares had become. Even the cheery, "Hi, Mom. Tippy wants out!" from the pet cockatiel did little to help. An aviary was a must. We had to build a house for our birds.
Planning began with trips to a number of aviary set-ups. Most proved to be converted garages and garden sheds or flights wired into sunless basements. But each visit seemed to provide us with some new idea, and so the plans were drawn up and presented to a contractor for an estimate of what it would cost to build a modest house for our birds. It had to be large enough to house a growing collection, but small enough to stay fun to operate; large enough to be efficient, yet small enough not to be a financial burden.
The contractor felt that he could prefab most of the structure at his lumber yard on the mainland before trucking it over to our island residence.
His price seemed reasonable so we gave him the go-ahead signal and before you could say chickweed the roof trusses were taking shape. The husband half of this team headed north while the wife half was left to wrap up a few details.
The first detail was to have an additional five feet in length added to the original plans. This, the contractor was told, would allow us to have three smaller flights on either side of a windowed five-foot center flight. Something must have happened in the translation, because not only did the window not end up in the center, this small addition somehow resulted in a final price of more than double the original estimate.
The next detail was to find some place to put the proposed building on our densely treed property. The first plan, to bring in a machine via the rear of the property, proved to be impossible for a number of reasons, trespass being only one of them. The solution was to extend and widen the existing driveway at the front of the property, taking it past the house and greenhouse, up to the desired area at the rear. This was done soon enough, but at the expense of some very nice hedges and two areas oflawn. Several fine old trees, including an apple tree, had to go.