The first magician to introduce parakeets and later budgerigars into his act, Jack Kodell played the London Palladium, the London Hippodrome and the Savoy Hotel. In the act entitled A Fantasy of Birds, he produced parakeets out of thin air. But perhaps his most startling illusion was a version of the Indian rope trick, in which a parakeet climbed to the top of the rope and then vanished in a puff of smoke.
SOURCE: The Stage at 07:43AM on July 16, 2012