Diana,
Thank you for the nice things you said of me. The shoulders of the giants that I stood on deserved much of those accolades. That started when I was small and reading books by Gerald Durrell and David Attenbourough.
I came as an innocent into the bird world when Tinkerbell came into my care in Taiwan. I then gained other shoulders such as Karen Pryor. She said nice things of me recently that I copied into my blog.
Karen Pryor//Jackie Mash 03//Sieben & Jackie // Nasty Nic
http://shanlung.livejournal.com/137954.html And most important of all will be that remarkable birdwhisperer Mr Lin staying in a remote hamlet in the midst of the mountain ranges of Taiwan. Do yourself a favour and check the links on him in above URL.
When I had Yingshiong the white rumped shama, the literature told me that the shama is so shy that they will not eat if you are watching them. I extended that to not even making eye contact with new birds until they were ready.
One the ice was broken, it was quite fast after that.
Shamas were prized for the tail, and much more importantly, the power of their singing and the variety. Shama could be bought for USD 400 and up to USD6000.
I stunned the shama world when I released recordings of Yingshiong and they could hear for themselves how a shama could sing when happy and allowed to fly in space much much bigger than a cage or even an aviary. And allowed interactions with the caregiver and given toys to play with.
More than half of my hits came from Indonesia and Thailand where shamas are in the rage. I hope what I done with Yingshiong would inspire those folks to try to do what I have done, for their own self interest in having a much more valuable singer. And allowing their shamas a much better life than just kept in a cage.
The shama world had not even known that shamas could hover like a humming bird until they saw Yingshiong interacting with me and read the reports I made and saw the photos.
