Baby ribbons

Male fledgelings

 The ultimate joy of keeping birds ! Seeing them successfully breed and rear young!

Beren -Red/yellowhead, purple breast, blueback male

Ëol -Black head, purle breast,blueback male

Tinuviel – Yellowhead,whitebreast,blueback female

New arrivals !

Bough a red/yellowheaded purple breast, blue back male and a normal greenback, blackhead, purple breast female, and after abit of thinking I decided to keep them together as a pair so that I now have 2 unrelated pairs

This way I can also sell unrelated pairs – from the chicks they produce, as well as get some more splitt for blue, greens

 

The canary followed the buy along with the cage and almost 10kg of birdseed, and I’m not sure if I am keeping her or not…she is very charming, but I never really saw myself as a canary bird man..

 

 

 

Amadeus

Amadina

I was offered a pair of ribbonfinches in exchange for a couple of my young gouldians and it was an offer I couldn’t refuse

This is an african waxbill – it has a reputation in aviculture to be abit of a bully. Especially during breeding, so I will have to keep a close eye on them to make sure they dont harass the smaller birds.

They are similar in size to my gouldians.

The sexes are easily distinguished in that the hen lacks the red ribbon mark on the throat.

I named them Amadeus and Amadina

It has an estimated global extent of occurrence of 3,300,000 km². It is found in Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Portugal (introduced), Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

ref Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-throat_Finch

The black yellowehead whitebreast and the 2 uncoloured males are from the 3rd clutch

The 3rd clutch hatched the 02.03.2011

They fledged normal/olivegreens

2males and 1 female.

So far only the female has coloured out completely, and the males are lagging behind. It looks as tho the male that’s most coloured up atm is going to be blackhead yellow and finish colouring up in about 2 weeks time. The second male..anytime between 2 and 3 weeks I’d guess, and I am stil hoping he will be yellowhead

Black yellowhead, whitebreast female

Yellowhead, whitebreast female

Yellowhead,whitebreast blueback female

The second clutch hatched the 01.01.2011

3weeks old they jumped out of the nest

They fledged green 2 and gray 1

On day 40 they still begged the parents for food

12.05.2011 – 4months and 11 days after hatching the two greens coloured out completely whilst the gray one lagged behind.

They are all females and they all grew up fully coloured out.

The gray one turned into a yellowhead, whitebreast blueback. In blue birds the red and yellow colours are suppressed and in this case the yellow turned gray, so she looks like a gray head.

The first clutch – the one starting to colour out is the one that died

The two black headed normals – Actually they are black yellow heads as you can see by the yellow tipped beaks

The blue male

Ok, I decided to redo this post drastically and go more in debt since it’s been 6 months since the last post.

Clutch 1: Four chicks hatched 07.11.2010

They turned out to fledge green 3, and gray 1. – I studied theyr baby pic and noticed that the gray one was pink instead of flesh coloured like the others so you really can tell at an early stage. (Gray fledgelings turn blue when they colour out)

3weeks after they hatched they jumped out of the nest box.

7 weeks and they started singing – all 4 turned out to be males.

07.03.2011 – The most colourfull of the juveniles died..fell behind a piece of furniture and got stuck there and died

Did you know there are only about 2500/3000 adult lady gouldian finches left in the wild ?

There seems to be a mixture of reasons for this – trapping for petshops (Stopped in the 1959 export ban on australian wildlife) attack by air sac mites, neglect/misuse of the natural habitat , and a poor survival rate from juvenile to adult through the rainy season.

Despite being one of the most colourful,and popular birds kept in captivity, surprisingly  little is known about it’s life  in the wild.

 The save the gouldian fund run by aviculturist Mike Fidler is trying to discover and thus prevent the reasons for the decline and help boost the remaining populations. By studying the birds in the wild they have allready discovered very interresting things about the finches like how the red heads and black heads aren’t really the best match for each other, And that if you pair a red head and a black head the survival rate of the offspring goes down.

This is just a few of the things that is  also helpful for us avicultutists who will then benefit from a greater understanding of the birds we keep and lets us take better care of them.

I have included the links to they’re homepage and they’re facebook page so be good and take some time to read up on the current status of this superb bird! And maybe even make a donation to help the ongoing conservation work

http://www.savethegouldian.org/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-the-Gouldian-Fund/172756969409137?ref=ts

and a great link with great pictures of gouldians and other finches in the wild in australias northern territory

http://www.fabulousfinch.com/gouldian-finch-pictures.htm

First som bad news, one of the owl finches got into the diamond sparrows cage and was bullied to death by them, so now I have one pair and a single male..

Then some good news !

Irmo and Estë my gouldians had new years eve hatchlings !

3 of 5 eggs hatched

The chicks are now 13 days old and it seems like there is another blue one

The remaining owl finch pair have started laying again and I put a nest box in for them last night, so fingers xxx’ed for more happy healthy hatchlings from them

Then I plan to see if I can pair the single male with one of they’re chicks as he will be unrelated to them.

Plans for 2011: 1.Manage to get chicks from the Diamond Sparrows, not sure what I am doing wrong there.

2.Keep the blue gouldian chicks and try to specialise in this colour form/mutation as well as in normal bodied yellowheads.

Daddy with young, notice the one peeking out from the nestbox !

A bird in the hand

Fledgeling/Juvenile goulds abut 4 weeks old