were English Fallow, red eye, solid without ring German, red eye with ring Californian, similar to German, red eye with ring Californian, a near solid red eye type with rather fine grey markings Texas, a red eye with strong body colour He said all were recessive and produce normals if intermated. The numbers of all varieties of budgerigar in captivity declined dramatically during the war years and when aviculture restarted in earnest in the late 1940s English Fallows were very rare. They were originally quite small and were never very popular with breeders of exhibition birds. In the period from the 1960s to the 1980s they almost died out, but Dr Margaret Young of Rochester, Kent kept the variety alive almost single-handed, and now the variety is gaining steadily in popularity. The name Fallow was first applied to the German Fallow by Herr Kokemüller after Dr Steiner, who examined some German Fallow feathers microscopically, wrote to him, "It would be better to describe this form as the fallow Budgerigar rather than cinnamon." At the time it was believed that Dr Steiner used the word by analogy with fallow or undeveloped land, to mean the melanin pigment was undeveloped, but as an alternative meaning for 'fallow' (and also for its German equivalent) is 'pale yellow' or 'light brown', it seems far more likely that it was this meaning that was intended. When the English Fallow appeared a few years later it was so similar in appearance to the German Fallow that for a time they were both called Fallows. Later, English, German and Scottish Fallows were proved to be distinct and separate mutations by test matings made independently by T G Taylor, Mrs Amber Lloyd of Walton-on-Thames and Frank Wait, and qualified names were then introduced to distinguish them. It was found that birds of any two of the mutations produced only normal black-eyed young when paired together. Genetics The English Fallow is an autosomal mutation causing recessive changes to the form of the melanin pigment. There is no universally accepted genetic symbol for either the locus or mutant allele, so the simple symbol fe+ will be adopted here for the wild-type allele at this locus, and the symbol fe for the English Fallow mutant allele, in keeping with the most widely used name in budgerigar circles. In its visual effect, the English Fallow mutation is recessive to its wild-type allele,