Back from the Amazon with tropical birds: archive, 8 December 1960

8 December 1960: A trip to the Amazon, not the local pet shop, for one exotic bird owner

Probably the river Amazon is the last remaining region of the earth where the traveller can really feel that the twentieth century may be only an unpleasant dream.

It was not, however, for this reason that Mrs Rachel Goodman bought a ticket on the Liverpool cargo-liner Hubert, which set off nearly four months ago on a leisurely 15,000-mile trip to the Caribbean and the Amazon. She was in search of tropical birds to add to her collection of 300, which has spread from semi-detached house to garden aviary in Cranleigh Drive, Brooklands, near Manchester.