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ceived a personal teaching position in human Of course, he was an international judge of
physiology. frilled canary varieties.
Among his 28 scientific publications, all on Umberto Zingoni died on July 10, 2012.
experimental research, the ones about the
automatism of the embryonal heart of birds In Conclusion
stand out. For these experiments, he per-
sonally developed the required measuring Born as potential foster parent for the luxury
equipment. frilled canaries of the Florentine initiators,
the Fiorino has evolved during fifty years as a
In 1959, he started to devote himself to orni- recognized and commonly appreciated varie-
thoculture, and from then on bred all varie- ty of posture canaries with unique properties.
ties of frilled canaries.
Nevertheless, it still does not completely
Since 1978, the year in which he was elected match the image that these creators had in
chairman of the technical committee on fri- mind, and that was expressed in the stan-
lled canaries of the F.O.I., he has published dard. Because of the excellent reproductive
over a hundred articles in “Italia Ornitholo- qualities of the Fiorino, it should be possible
gica”, most of them of a technical nature, but to further improve the characteristics of this
comments and answers to readers as well. beautiful species.
He was responsible for two editions of the In particular, a fuller and better attached crest
“Criteria di Giudicio del Canarini Arriciati”, should be achievable. On the standard, I have
the Italian standard for frilled canaries. extracted a companion paper from my thesis,
in which I also devote attention to comments
His special merit is that, jointly with the bree- by Umberto Zingoni in one of his later publi-
der Michele del Prete, he created a new varie- cations.
ty of frilled canaries, the Fiorino, which was
recognized internationally in 1989.
In 1990 he was appointed editor in chief of
“Italia Ornithologica”. In that year, also his
treatise “Canaricoltura” appeared, a specta-
cular encyclopedic monograph of 700 pages,
which is considered a true masterpiece on
aviculture.
The second edition, published in 1997, is sti-
ll available through the F.O.I., and is for the
most part still current.
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