Matthews March 2024_2

James Matthews: Over the last five show seasons James has won 20 Grand Champion awards with 9 different birds at BSNSW Branch and Associates shows. That includes 3 Grand Champions so far this year with 2 different birds.

He has had a number of birds represent NSW at the Nationals with his best results being wins in 2017 with a Spangle Cinnamon Greygreen hen in the AOSV Spangle class and in 2019 with a Greywing Greygreen cock.

Over the last six Nationals he has had 21 birds represent NSW with 12 of those finishing in the top nine. He had 3 birds represent NSW at the 2023 National with the highest placing a 3rd in Spangle and 6 birds represent NSW at the 2022 National with the highest placing being 3rd in Greywing.

James breeds a number of varieties, but Spangles are the cornerstone of his aviary.

Pam Hewitt: Pam specialises in Goldenface and Darkwings. She has won the Best of Variety competition in NSW the last few years. She had a good year with the Goldenface last year which is why she can let so many go in these auctions. She does not usually keep any Goldenface that are Cinnamon and/or Opaline so some of those are in the auctions.

Al birds across the 2 auctions are 2022 and 2023 rung with only one Clearwing hen having been bred with and that is noted in its comments. All others are maiden birds.

With Pam's treatment we had an usual breeding season last year and have a lot of 2023 rung birds that are just going through their moult now and will be sorted out hopefully after the National.

Feel free to ask questions and I will try and respond as quickly as possible.

Good luck and good breeding

We are having 5 auctions, all start on the same day and will finish across 3 days - Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

That way everyone will be able to see all the birds available in all the auctions before the first auction closes so they can decide which ones they are interested in across the auctions. Also you won't need to wait weeks to get the birds if we did the auctions one per week.

We went with the auctions of 20 each as people have said they have trouble trying to keep up with the birds they are interested in with larger number of lot auctions. So I think this is the way to get them done in a short time and still give people the opportunity to get the birds they are interested in.

We have the starting price low to allow the bidding to set the price.

I try and avoid subjective wording like big, small etc as people can have totally different ideas as to what constitutes those but rather I try and put 4 different photos for each lot to try and give you as much idea about the birds as possible. 

I was told that the photos previously had been blurry and I worked out that the camera was focussing on the cage bars and not the bird so this time I have had the phone right against the cage front to take the photos between the bars. 

Some birds handled that fine (coming right up to the camera and making their head look overly large) and others were not at all impressed. So the photos are the best I could get.

Extended bidding will be activated so any bids in the last 3 minutes of the auction (and then subsequent 3 minutes) will extend the finish time by up to 30 minutes. This is to be fair to all bidders and stop a sniping bid to be made without giving the other bidder the chance to respond.