John Foglia's Adelaide city shop a budgerigar exporter by thousands to meet European mania in later 19th Century
John Foglia's role in the world export of budgerigars, from through his shop in Rundle East east, Adelaide city (at the far right with frontage sign "Cheapest shop in Adelaide for cages") was featired in the 2020 book Budgerigars by Adelaide former journalists Sarah Harris and Don Baker. Inset: The German ship Rhein that carried 14,000 birds, mostly budgerigars and zebra finches, exported by Foglia from Port Adelaide in 1905.
Budgerigars by the thousands were exported though John Foglia’s small Rundle Street east, Adelaide city, store in the later 19th Century as he became South Australia’s leading feeder of the European mania for the birds.
Adelaide, being close to both the arid interior and Murray River breeding grounds favoured by the little green and gold parrot, became the gateway for much of the world’s budgerigar breeding stock. Ever since the first pair of budgerigars (gidjirrigaas) were delivered to England aboard the barque Kinnear in 1840, they set off a mania in English and European markets.
John Gould, who gave the birds their full binomial name, melopsittacus undulatus, and took the first live specimens offshore, wrote in his Birds of Australia. “This lovely little bird is pre-eminent for both beauty of plumage and elegance of form, which, together with its extreme cheerfulness of disposition and sprightliness of manner, render it an especial favourite.” By the 1860s, Gould observed saw “every ship coming direct from the southern part of Australia” adding to their numbers.
From a Swiss silk-making family in the village Capolago, Foglia migrated to Australia in his early twenties and started in the wildlife trade, buying and selling imported common pigeons (rock doves) for local racing, homing and gun club enthusiasts. But the export of native Australian fauna, principally birds and more particularly budgies, was soon the backbone of his thriving business from the 1860s. At 217 Rundle Street East in Adelaide city, Foglia set himself up as South Australia’s biggest bird trader and leading export broker of wild-caught budgerigars.
The trade escalated with the advent of the faster steamers. The steamer Souchays returned to England in 1867 laden with copper, wool, flour and 15,000 pairs of budgies or shell parrots. That year Lycurgus Underdown, publican of the Hindmarsh Hotel in Adelaide, amassed a huge stock of birds including more than 35,000 budgies, kept in cages behind the pub and advertised to ships’ captains.
Australia still imported canary seed in 200 gallon or 400 gallon iron tanks to feed all the captured bird. In 1880, a Mr Deslaunde became the first farmer to sow a test acre of choice canary grass on South Australia’s Lefevre Peninsula. The retail price for experted budgerigars dropped from £5 a pair by 1881 but the demand remained high. Foglia sold 16,000 budgerigars to a single dealer and “it took three of us three days from 7 o’clock in the morning to 7 o’clock at night to count them”.
Between 1885 and 1909, Foglia shipped, by his own estimate, an average of 40,000 birds a year, mostly budgies. Good trappers could make as much as £250 a year with their nets and snares. Foglia paid £65 in 1905 to secure the 11 tons of room on the top deck of the German boat G.M.S. Rhein for 14,000 birds, mostly budgies and zebra finches but also including diamond firetails, Major Mitchell cockatoos, corellas and native pigeon species.
Wild-caught budgies were then still fetching two shillings and sixpence a pair on the European market even though breeding farms were starting on the Continent. W. H. Foglia, who took over his father’s Adelaide interests in 1926, was reported as taking a pair of rare Princess Alexandra parakeets to England. They were eventually bought by Baron Rotshchild, among the prestigious clients gained by his father. The Foglia business ended when W. H. Foglia died in 1943.