Animals: Rollers

As Crooner Alice Faye differs from operatic Soprano Kirsten Flagstad, so differs the beauteous yellow parlor canary from that less spectacular-looking musical technician, the Glucke Roller Canary. Ordinary house canaries just sing. Rollers roll. They trill and pipe some twelve identifiably different kinds of music. For 400 years eager teachers have bred away their natural song, using organ music to teach them Gluckes and Rolls, using running water to teach them the elegant Deep Bubbling Water Tour. Modern breeders lef young birds learn by listening to older champions. Some trainers have tried phonograph records, but not successfully. The birds learn and include in their song the needle’s scratch and crack.

To Oakland, Calif, and Portland, Ore., for shows of two of the Pacific Coast’s three important Roller associations, breeders last week hopefully expressed their prize birds. The complicated work of judging Oakland’s 250 showbirds fell to Frank Bires and William Ragon (for their services, $300 each). They gave the show’s master team championship to a quartet owned by San Diego’s Olsen Schummer. It was the team’s twelfth successive first prize.

In Portland, crippled onetime Singer Leonard Taylor, who has judged shows from Montreal to San Diego, had 200 birds to listen to. Until Judge Taylor was ready to hear them, the birds were kept in a darkened bedroom of Portland’s Heathman Hotel, occasionally fed oily black rape seed that their voices might be mellow. By teams of four, then singly, Judge Taylor had them brought into another room, where bright light made them burst into song. If they were reticent, he shook a wooden rattle, coaxed, “Come on, boy.” Listening for Rolls, Gluckes, Bells, Schokels, Flutes, and for faults— Hard Aufzug, Bad Nasal Tour, Ugly Interjection—he awarded points, to the best between 60 and 80 out of a possible 100. Weary after three days’ hearings, Judge Taylor gave the show’s championship to year-old Golden Gate Special, a soft yellow male Roller owned by Howard W. Lewis of San Francisco, then went to bed. At four next morning officials pulled him out of bed, told him he had missed four birds. He sleepily listened, said Golden Gate Special was still best.