Cute fluffy yellow plumes may be synonymous with Easter, but bird hobbyists have warned that a rare canary species bred for centuries in Britain may become a thing of the past because of Brexit. Access to the birds, particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium where canary and budgie breeding is also popular, has been lethally impeded by new rules. Each bird now has to be tested and certified for five diseases before it can travel between the UK and the EU. “To test the birds for these diseases you have to do a swab of the vent and the throat. If you swab a canary’s throat, you kill it. So the vet might come back and say there is no disease – but your bird will be dead by then,” the Edinburgh-based canary breeder Donald Skinner-Reid explained. The retired solicitor’s wings have also been clipped on the show circuit. He is no longer able to exhibit or compete at the annual Gouden Ring show – Belgium’s “Crufts for birds” – and the world show in Naples. Birds are judged on their size, plumage and posture on a perch. Skinner-Reid is a proud winner of the gold medal at the British show in Stafford last October for his Scots Fancy, a rare species of canary dating back to the 1800s.
Recognised by their hunched appearance in competitions, they are judged by the perfection of the C-shape they can form from the tip of the beak to the tail. On a third front, Skinner-Reid has lost sales to Northern Ireland – where EU rules apply under the special Brexit deal. Skinner-Reid has urged the government to treat hobbyist breeders in the same way as dogs, cats and ferrets, all of which were covered by the revised Northern Ireland protocol. “They have basically turned a hobby into an international export,” he said. “In one fell swoop they have sacrificed the entire hobby, and the people who are affected – working-class people, people who voted for Brexit, who voted to leave – are now finding that they can’t actually do anything because they can’t take their birds back and forth to mainland Europe.” Robert Innes, the editor of Cage and Aviary Birds magazine, estimates there are “tens of thousands” of hobbyist breeders in the UK preserving important historic British breeding lines such as the Scots Fancy, Yorkshire, Fife, Norwich and London canary. Many of the breeds date back to the 19th century and were exported to fellow bird fanciers in Europe, spreading the stock and ensuring gene pools for all bird-lovers across the EU. “It is a total disaster, an absolute disaster for this historic hobby. It will within a few generations, it will imperil numerous historic British breeds of pedigree. … Their gene pool will be terribly badly impoverished if we can’t exchange stock with the continentals as we’ve been doing for decades,” said Innes. He said one of the “wonderful things about this pastime” was that it had been very much a working-class hobby. At about £30 a bird, the cost of stock had been affordable and was “a nice hobby for people on relatively low incomes”, he explained. Zac Goldsmith acknowledged in 2021 that Brexit would have an impact, telling the Edinburgh East SNP MP, Tommy Sheppard, the trade in birds was “important for the introduction of new blood lines for conservation”, including the rare species of canary, particularly the Scots Fancy. But he warned there would be new rules for EU travel for “captive birds including those kept for shows, races, exhibitions, competitions and breeding”. However, no exceptions were made for non-commercial hobbyists and one specialist courier, Walkers European Express Service, which was doing 150-200 consignments a week, was forced to close because of the new veterinary certification required for each bird. “The obvious way forward would be to find some way of making the same rule for a limited number of pedigree birds to be imported under the same rule as pets,” said Innes.