It was the late evening of 02/24/2006 when Carolin Woelk from Germany sent me a message which contained a long list of budgie names for my statistics. Among these names also was the 6000th different name: Onkel Herrmann. Regrettably the story of this anniversary bird is very tragic because he was already gone long ago when Carolin sent me this e-mail. Here is the sad story told by Carolin:

"I discovered an online ad in which the little man was mentioned in the DHD and I immediately fell in love with him because I adore pied budgies in grey. However the little man lived far away from me, in fact nearly 500 kilometres apart from me. But I moved heaven and earth to get him to my place so he finally arrived at my on 06/13/2005.

According to what his former owner told me Onkel Herrmann was born in the beginning of 2004. Well, but he was no grey Pied but a mauve one, but that didn't matter to me because he was so cute anyway. But what was really bad was the fact he was seriously ill. Regrettably the former owner forgot to mention that - well, the lady didn't even know that it is not normal for a budgie to vomit his food again and again. Until the 07/12/2005 I fought for the little man's life but he was already too weak and the bacteria won the fight...

If I only knew he was so ill, then I would not have expected of him to travel that far even though it seemed as if it hadn't been too exhausting for him. I hope that Onkel Herrmann can lead a wonderful budgie life wherever his soul may be now. Regrettably I could only help him by putting him down because of his cureless disease. I didn't have the power to save his little soul.

Farewell, my little Onkel Herrmann."