World Show 2012

There is always an air of excitement when attending the World Show wherever it is held and those who used to attend the National Exhibition of Cage & Aviary Birds of yesteryear will understand that excitement. I have attended a number of World Shows in the past but this year’s show was with a difference as I was invited to judge.

OMJ Congress

The World Show is the show of the legislative world organisation Confederation of Ornithologique Mondiale (COM) which was formed in 1952. The show is hosted each year in a different country in Europe and this year’s show was hosted by COM Spain in Almeria situated in southern Spain on the Mediterranean Sea. This was in fact the 60^th COM show. There are 40 countries affiliated to COM stretching as far as South Korea in the east to Chile in the west.

COM structure has two executive committees each consisting of seven members; the COM Board of Directors and the judges’ committee called the Ordre Mondial Des Juges OMJ. Each committee has its own president, vice president, secretary and members of the board. The affiliated countries are divided into two groups A & B depending on their size and the number of OMJ judges that they have.

This year’s show had 105 judges invited from 13 countries mainly from Europe but some from Argentina, Brazil & Colombia.

The two conveyors of the British team, Richard Lumley & Gary Mann, took 30 hours each way for the journey and did 3,500 miles round trip to attend this event on our behalf; so our sincere thanks go to them for this tiring and thankless task.

COM Congress

British & Irish Conveyors
(l to r: Peter Sherlock, Gary Mann,
Richard Lumley & Maurice O’Connor)

With my fellow Italian judge, Roberto Sabatini, we commenced judging the 327 budgerigars entered on the Monday morning. However, the show had received an entry of 26,367 from 2971 exhibitors coming from 17 countries. It is mind boggling indeed. As always, the host country supplied the biggest team and on this occasion Spain’s team was 11,836 (44.9%) and the Coloured Canaries, always the largest, with 48% of the total entry. Our COM-UK team was 142 (0.54% of the total entry) from 29 exhibitors.

Friday to Sunday was spent at the show looking at the wonderful birds and the various mutations that you normally do not see at our shows. It was a great time meeting the 30 plus fanciers from our country who attended the event as well as some from Gibraltar, and also making new friendships with so many judges, fanciers and workers as well as renewing old friendships.

Saturday night was the gala night with over 400 attending and our table consisted of 8 British and our friend from Israel Avi Rubens. It was again a wonderful evening with the family of nations sitting together eating some wonderful Spanish food and listing to some lovely Spanish & Italian singers and flamingo dancers. The finale of that evening was when each country was called to the stage to be presented with their national flag and singing the national anthem. I only hoped that there were more of us to get to the stage and I wished that we were as great as our name indicated Great Britain. The speaker also announced the number of medals each country has won and it was announced that we had won 5 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze medals. Of course Spain, as to be expected, won 44% of the total medals awarded.

The flag ceremony at the Gala Dinner

On behalf of COM-UK and the 29 exhibitors, I would like to record our sincere thanks to Richard Lumley & Gary Mann for their tremendous work in collecting our team from various points of delivery at home and making the long journey to the show and back again delivering the birds to the various exhibitors on Monday & Tuesday. Their work is much appreciated. Our congratulations are also extended to GeoffCapes, Roger Carr, Bernard Howlett & Louis Spiteri for winning gold medals and to Roy Aplin who won a silver and two bronze medals as well as John Ward who won a bronze medal.

Louis Spiteri with his gold medal
winner Common Rosefinch

Roger Carr with his Gold
Medal and Certificate

Bernard Howlett with his two Gold Medals

Medals and certificates for
Roger Carr, Geoff Capes & Roy Aplin

We made an appeal in the schedule for exhibitors to donate birds so that we could sell them at the show to raise funds for COM-UK and again I would like to thank Richard Lumley, Willy McKay, Rob Bunting, Chris Smith, Gary Mann and myself for donating birds that were sold and raised some funds for next year’s show.

My final appeal is for more exhibitors and more birds for next year’s event in Belgium.

COM-UK officials at the stand (Richard Lumley, Gary Mann & Ghalib Al-Nasser)

COM Officials with COM-UK officials (Richard Lumley, Salvatore Cirmi COM President, Ghalib Al-Nasser, Carlos Ramôa COM Assistant Secretary & Dino Pocecco Secretary of Italian Budgerigar Society)

Ernest Gracia receiving his Gold Judges Badge (15 years) from Richard Lumley with Chris Smith, Simon Tammam, Gary Mann & Ghalib Al-Nasser

COM-UK officials with our friends from Gibraltar

COM-UK team was 142 birds from 29 exhibitors and won 5 gold, 1 silver & 3 bronze. They are as follows:

Roy Aplin – Budgerigars – 1 silver (grey cock) & 2 bronze (skyblue cock & opaline cinnamon green hen)

Roger Carr – Budgerigars – 1 gold (team of lutinos)

Geoff Capes – Budgerigars – 1 gold (recessive pied)

Bernard Howlett – Song Thrush & Common Blackbird – 2 golds

Louis Spiteri – Common Rosefinch – 1 gold

John Ward – Bengalese – 1 bronze