CLEARBODY ORIGINS

Letter from Ron Hunt

25 Hurlstone Avenue
Glenfield, NSW 2167
29 June 2026

Dear Sir,

I thought the American fellow who sent the article to Budgerigar World had some very good points on Clearbodies.

I am not sure about the South Australian one. Some tell me that only Kelwyn ever saw them. I do know that Harold Cooper and I were keen on breeding the Cinnamon and Greywing Yellows.

We were convinced that the Cinnamons were, as the name suggests, yellow birds with Cinnamon markings, and that this should be the class at the ANBC Show.

The bird we called a Greywing Yellow, when mated to Greywings, actually produced Normals. This told us that they could not be Greywings, and we both felt that we might have the elusive Clearbody.

At this time, I had to help my wife fight for her life against the big “C”. Harold was also facing a problem. We do not know where the actual birds finished up, and no one seems to have them today.

I feel that the Clearbodies we have came from the United Kingdom, or perhaps the United States. I had to search to find the ones I photographed, as the birds seen on the show bench can easily be mistaken for 50 per cent Greywings.

Maybe someone reading this article might be able to throw some light on the subject.

Ron Hunt

Clearbody

When this variety was first brought before the then NSW Colour and Standards Committee, the committee had very strict rules that were applied to new mutations presented for inclusion in the show schedules and Standard of Perfection:

The mutation should be completely different from any existing standard.
It should be easily bred without requiring the breeder to be a graduate in genetics or to hold a diploma in livestock breeding.
It should be pleasing to the eye.

The correct version of the Clearbody complied with all of these points.

Before we formed and approved this standard, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr Travnicek. I took him to dinner at our local RSL Club and then took him to our Macarthur meeting.

He was strongly in favour of standardising only the Opaline version. In his opinion, the Clearbody gene was aligned with the Opaline. He had been breeding the variety and, more importantly, keeping records. He found that the Normals never became Clearbodies, despite many years of trying.

Dr Travnicek was credited with being the first to breed the Texas Clearbody. When he spoke at the Macarthur meeting, he was very convincing in arguing that Opaline was the way to go.

Despite his knowledge and experience, we went our own way and retained the Normals in The Standard. The result of this poor decision is that we do not comply with the original rules established by the then Colour and Standards Committee.

At a recent NSW interclub competition, I deliberately asked a fellow member, while we were looking at the Clearbody class:

“Do we have 50 per cent Greywings at the ANBC Show?”

The reply was very interesting. The person, who shall remain nameless, went to find out whether this was the case. By then, I felt guilty and called out:

“I was joking. This is the Clearbody class!”

On another occasion, probably last century, I was judging and my steward—who later went on to become a National Judge—asked:

“Why did you bring the Greywings back?”

The person was embarrassed and started to take the class back until I said:

“You have not made a mistake. These are the Clearbodies. They just look like Greywings.”

This tells us that these birds do not stand out as being different from birds belonging to other standards.

A bird with a beautiful yellow or snowy-white body, sharp black wing markings and strong striations is a very beautiful mutation. This should be the correct colour mutation, and it should be restricted to the Opaline if that is what will give us the form originally bred by the breeder who developed it.

We should remove the non-complying birds and accept only the Opaline mutation. It is time to stop allowing mutations to be destroyed.

I also draw attention to the changes in the colour of the Clearwing’s tail. Originally, it was yellow or white. Today, it is a hotchpotch of colours, and nobody could really have a clear vision of what the tail should look like.

The Standard was changed repeatedly to accommodate breeders who could not maintain the correct colours. Look at today’s Clearwings: many are little more than poor Greywings and do not appeal to anyone who has seen correct Clearwings.

Please do not allow the same thing to happen to the Clearbody. We are already on the way.

Ron Hunt