BULBULS: in need of specialisation
THE bulbul family has been around the hobby for all of my 40 years as a fancier. However, unfortunately, a lot of species and individuals have been lost from our aviaries and will probably never come back.
During the period from the early 1970s to the early 1980s, the straw-headed, finch-billed, ruby-throated and other bulbuls were available from lots of well-known dealers, now long gone. A few still remain popular, such as the red-whiskered, red-vented and white-cheeked bulbuls. Recently, I have seen advertised the spectacled and yellow-vented, the latter a typical species found in the wild from Egypt to Iraq and Iran.
A really rare species is the scaly-breasted bulbul which in my opinion is a beautiful species. It has been bred in the UK by Gillian Sumner in Preston for the first time, I believe in the last few years. This species is more delicate than most and needs a
