Editor's letter (Feb 19 issue)

The show season might be drawing to a close, but the number of show reports in our still-to-be-published queue continues to mount up. This is despite our best efforts to publish as many show reports as we can as quickly as we can after we’ve received them.

Between October 9, 2008 and January 29, 2009 alone, we have published 69 pages of Club News, considerably more than this period in 2007/2008. We’ve published 179 show reports – 49 in October, 63 in November, 36 in December and 31 in January. 

These figures are just for open shows. We have also published numerous reports for members’ shows, invitation shows, table shows and roller canary singing contests.

And while I’d love to get the backlog out of the way by devoting a whole issue of Cage & Aviary Birds purely to show reports, it would not be fair on all our thousands of readers who do not show birds at all – according to our last readership survey in February 2007, that’s 52 per cent of you.

For those of you that are still waiting to see your show report in print, I would kindly ask for your patience. I can do a lot of things, but I can’t fit a pint into a half-pint glass!

Talking about shows, do you think exhibiting is the lifeblood of the fancy? Either way, I’d love to hear your views and may include them in our upcoming hot debate (March 5 issue) on the topic. If you’d like to have your say, simply send 50 words (or more) on the issue, either by post or email, marked “hot debate”.

Finally, I know I keep banging on about our campaign to raise money for Rachael Wakefield who needs to raise £400,000 for a double-lung transplant, but it looks like we are far from raising the cash needed. 

Can I urge all birdkeepers to pick up the phone and enter our competition – the £1.50 that it costs could help so much! Full details are here.