Phoenix120913

Michael is now keeping and training Phoenix after his third moult. He hopes to prepare him to be in time for the night competition at Bishan on 22nd September.  Its now only 2 weeks since Phoenix completed his third moult.  Usually, it will take about 1 1/2 months or more for the shama to reach top form and I doubt that Phoenix's form will be able to rise sufficiently by the time of the competition for him to do well, but you never know as Michael is really good at training shamas.

I am also entering Dragon for the competition. He is easy to train but he is still not used to night travel so last night, I took Dragon for a drive to Michael's home to get him used to travelling at night. Also, I need to expose him to new surroundings - in this case, Michael's home.

At Michael's home, we placed the cages some distance apart so that the 2 birds could hear but not see each other.  We switched on all the lights where the birds were to make the place as bright as possible.  We then played bird songs from You Tube to encourage the birds to sing.  Without doing this, our birds would have gone to sleep as it was way past their bed time.

Below is the video of Phoenix that I recorded with my handphone. He is not yet in top form but there is still slightly more than a week before the competition.  In the interval,  in addition to trying to raise the form of the birds, Michael and I will need to bring the birds for vehicle rides to get them used to travel.