Budgies fluctuate between being the third and fourth most popular household pet, so most Australians have a budgie story, says Carrie Timmer, of the Canberra Budgerigar Club (CBC). 

“I had a pet one as a child,” says Jan Wrate, secretary treasurer of the CBC.

“They’re low maintenance, you don’t need a big space to put them, they’re easy to clean.”

“They’re not destructive, they’re not noisy,” says Carrie.

“Birds are just easy,” says Jan.

Carrie, who also runs a day-care from her Theodore house, says that she bought a couple of budgies to show the kids the hatching process and to try her hand at breeding around four years ago. 

“I thought, there’s gotta be a budgie community here somewhere.”

She says she went looking and came across a Canberra-based budgie club that had been dormant for a few years. 

“A group of us that are really passionate about our budgies thought let’s just get it back up and running and let’s have some fun with this.”

Jan says: “There’s always been a budgie club in Canberra, 40 odd years it stems back, but it’s been a long time since there’s been a successful club.

“When we got the offer from the club that was in recession because of covid that they were happy for us to take it on board, we knew we had to change the focus.” 

Jan says historically, clubs would focus only on show budgies, which are bred for competition, and pet owners wanting general education were being neglected. 

“They wanted events that they could go to, and that wasn’t being met by the older clubs that had come and gone. 

“We knew that when we took over this club, that we needed to become modern, we needed to become inclusive, and we needed to encompass all budgies, and it didn’t matter if they had one budgie at home or they had hundreds.”

“Some people in our club don’t have any budgies, they just love birds,” says Carrie. 

“It started off with four or five of us,” says Jan, “and now we have 52 financial members in the club.”

“Once you become a member of the CBC, we have a private Facebook page so you can hop on there and not be judged,” says Carrie. 

“Put out all the silly questions, we can help.” 

Although Jan says 90 per cent of the club is people seeking out the social nature of it, and the opportunity to go “budgie crazy,” the club also organises educational talks with vets so owners can get preventative health advice.

Carrie says this prevention education is extremely important, because budgies hide their sickness and retreat into the flock.

There is a conservation aspect too, says Carrie, who breeds the smaller, heritage budgies. 

“There’s not many people in Canberra that have them, I might be one of the only breeders,” Carrie says.

“Most people breed them to be bigger but I try to keep mine at a smaller size to try and continue that heritage standard, otherwise we lose it.”

Poor breeding practices can leave budgies with genetic problems, says Carrie, and this can see them dying prematurely or being unable to fly or stand. 

“We’ve got one girl in our club that looks after disabled budgies, so it could be that they’ve broken their leg or a wing, or the next one she’s getting is a blind budgie,” says Jan.

But budgies in aviaries can also pick up diseases from other birds flying overhead and leaving droppings, particularly mites, Jan says.

“We’ve brought people back into the club that have been breeding for 50 years and that’s the type of knowledge that you can’t replicate,” says Carrie.

“I want to be able, on a Sunday afternoon, to go to a meeting, I want to be able to go to a breeder’s place and see what they do when their budgie is sick, and actually talk to them,” says Carrie. 

“All the small questions that the books don’t always tell you.”

Through the club, Jan says they have also been able to re-home hundreds of budgies as they have built up such a large network of trusted and reputable breeders and owners.

The CBC is funded by membership fees and fundraising ventures, says Jan, and they’re always looking for sponsors or new members.

Email conder41@velocitynet.com.au for more information or visit the Canberra Budgerigar Club Facebook page.