Thursday, January 1, 2015

Bird happenings at Eltham in 2014.

Our back yard has been very busy in the last six months.  We had a new chook house built for the hens, which freed up one of the finch aviaries for Ken to move some of the finches and quails back in there.  The aviaries look dwarfed by the chook house, but there is plenty of room for the small birds we have.
This was taken just before the chook house was built, and just after we had the paths and steps newly paved.
We have had an explosion in the population of quails, one pair hatching 9 chickens ain October, and now have another brood of eight.  Both lots are silver quail (the chicks are yellow at first).

Ken sold eight silver quail to a fellow aviculturist, who has hundreds of birds in his aviaries, including some of Ken's favourite parrot, the Princess parrot, so he bought a young female and put her in the newly cleaned aviary that was supposed to house more finches!



All of our birds are doing well, with several baby canaries hatching and surviving, but although the Goldfinches and Emblemas have been nest building and sitting on eggs, so far there are no hatchings.