The Rengstorff House is an historic home in Mtn. View, California that has been restored to its original Victorian appearance. They have occational fund raises such as High Tea. I made reservations to attend one on May 6, 2001 and invited 3 friends. When the tickets arrived, there was a note explaining there would be a hat contest. The theme was "birds" and being a canary breeder, I immediately thought of using a live bird in a hat. First, I asked my friends, whom I'd already invited, if they would be embarrassed if I wore such an outrageous and attention getting hat to this formal event. They assured me that it was alright, and they thought it was very original!

When we arrived for the afternoon tea, I secured the hat on my head after getting out of the car and barely started walking toward the historic house when people started staring and pointing! I was a little worried they wouldn't let me in, but everyone seemed to think it was great. During the Tea, there was a fashion show of historic costumes, many of which included hats with large feathers. The models kept looking at me, and it turned out they were the judges for the hat contest. In spite of my non-historic creation, they gave me first place! After the Tea, I walked around to the other rooms in the house and played model, explaining to the other guests how I constructed my hat and what materials were used, just like the real models did with their historic hats.

How my Bird Hat was Made
I bought a new straw hat with a flat top at KMart for about $6. At the hardware store, I got some ½" × ½" wire and cut it to just fit around the crown of the hat. I bent one vertical row of the circle around the other end and carefully put the sharp ends outward so the bird could not get stabbed. At Goodwill, I found a used small hat for a child or doll to use as the cage top. The top hat was attached with rubber bands and paper clips which I hid under the rim, but allowed the hat to unhinge as the door to the cage. To secure the hat on my head, I wore a small cap to make it fit more snug, and added an old rope belt to use as a chin tie, which was attached to the inside of the hat with duct tape. Small clear plastic cage cups were used for food and water. They were on the floor of the cage in the back to be unobtrusive. Tan napkins were used to line the cage floor, they blended with the straw color.

About the Bird in the Hat
I knew that I couldn't just stick any bird in such a small cage. I choose "Melting Snow", my prize winning blue variegated hen, because of her past show travel experience in small cages, and her age. The contest was during breeding season, but this hen was "retired" and my only adult canary available for this. She also has a very calm personality. I spent a week training her for this ordeal by only giving her treats while in the hat cage. I walked around with her in the hat on my head to get her used to that. The training paid off, because she spent the time at the High Tea eating the bit of broccoli in the cage, and calmly looking around at everyone. I told all the non-bird people that she was a show bird that I specially trained for the hat cage and they should not normally put a bird in such a small cage. For the couple of hours at the High Tea, my hen was very relaxed and unstressed, as far as I could tell. She was happy to return to the hen flight cage when it was over, and probably didn't miss her daily hat training sessions after that!

Here are some photos from the event.