Lady Biya’s Guide to Medieval Aviculture

Learning about the past through tourism and through living history recreations, re-enactments, and/or faires celebrating a specific time, place, and/or event in history is a popular and often expensive hobby. From October 1990 to about the summer of 2012 Laurel A. Rockefeller was part of the largest and most popular medieval history re-creation organization: the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Though originally focusing on European and Asian music as mostly a singer, Laurel A. Rockefeller combined her passion for cockatiels with her passion for hands-on history when she introduced the aviculture sciences to the SCA in 2006. Over the course of the next six years, she researched and wrote about companion birds in the middle ages, focusing on parrots and, as is encouraged in the SCA, honing that research towards her own late 12th century, Jin dynasty persona, “Lady Biya,” the title of “lady” granted to her in 2007 for her ground-breaking work with birds.

Though extensively published by both the Barony of Settmour Swamp in New Jersey and the Crown Province of Ostgardr in New York City, most of Laurel’s works have not survived her exit from the SCA. This book then is what survives of six years of extensive historical research and is of certain interest to anyone who wants to learn about parrot history for both Europe and Asia.