Donovan grew up on a farm for the first few years of his life, but his actual birding journey started at about the age of 9 (standard 2) when his dad and Donovan built his first aviary. It was about 8m long x 1.8m high x 2m wide, this was built along the Donkin wall.

Donovan started out with Chinese quails, zebra finches and a pair of Burmese doves, which his late grandfather bought for him.

Over the years as a teenager, Donovan trapped and kept a lot of wild birds, Red Wrens, Tinkies, Shelleys, Capie’s, Black Widows or Swee’s as they were commonly known.

Donovan have always kept the Australian finches, but did also keep a few of the parakeets, Rock Pebblers, Princess of Wales, Mealy Rosellas and then the Ruple parakeet, trying his hand at hand rearing Princess of Wales chicks.

Donovan's passion has always been with the finches and in the past Donovan has had the opportunity to keep and breed Purple Grenadiers and Orange Cheeks. Donovan also managed to get Sydney Waxbills to nest but unfortunately never put chicks on the perch.

Currently Donovan keeps mostly the African species: Dybowski's, Blue caps, Red ears, Black & White yellow wing Pytilias and a few others. Donovan also has Jacarinis, Cubans and a pair of Cardinals.

Donovan is in the process of building a new aviary for his Cardinals, which laid last season but would not incubate. Going forward, Donovan would really like to put more focus on the Cardinals.

Donovan does a water change every 3rd day using filtered rain/tank water with 1ml Virokill to 12litres water.

Donovan feeds a standard seed mix: 5 x white millet, 1 x plain bird and 12 x Jap with Red Manor and wild grass seeds given separately.

The soft food is a homemade soft food mix: Pronutro, Rusk, AVI finch and a few other ingredients, mixed with sprouted Jap, grated broccoli, carrot and egg with crushed eggshells with a squirt or two of Plume Plus.

His birds also get ants on a daily basis, but Donovan puts the ant clods in a tray or directly on the floor in the bigger aviaries – Donovan finds the birds love to scratch the ants out.