Our flock of Gouldian Finches

To anyone who is still visiting this blog, sorry it has been so long since I posted anything. Ken has made quite a few changes to the aviaries. He has sold most of the budgies, leaving only half a dozen, and they seem to be much happier now there is less of them in that aviary.
He has also sold all the Zebra finches except for four Charcoal finches, which have already hatched four eggs last month. They are in the same aviary as the four Canaries (two breeding pairs), but they haven't been successful in hatching the eggs they have laid.
The Gouldians are our success story. One of the reasons Ken sold the finches was to free up a second aviary for all the juvenile Gouldians we now have. So we now have three adult breeding pairs in one aviary (and they have four babies and more eggs at this moment), and 13 juveniles in the adjoining aviary.

Red headed male Gouldians.

Black headed male, red headed male, and a female in a very unusual position! She was preening herself just as I pressed the camera button! There is a red headed male just behind her.

Some of the juveniles. They are all about six months old except the male on the top perch, second from the left. He is about one year old, and has coloured up, but is going through his first moult. The young ones are just starting to colour up (it takes about a year) from their initial fawny feathers, to the green on their backs. The bright colours will start showing in little patches from now on, but we won't be able to tell which are male and female until they have coloured up completely.

February 2011.

These Galahs got caught in a heavy downpour of rain last week. They were waiting for me to put some seed out on the feeder, and they looked so miserable, perched on the gum tree branch.


Our breeding program last year in the aviaries was only moderately successful. The quails have had half a dozen clutches of eggs, with one or more hatchings each time, but the babies have only survived for a week or so, then we find them dead. I think there is too much competition in the aviary; there are about 20 finches and 3 young canaries, and although the quails live on the ground, the finches feed on the floor of the aviary as well as from their seed bowls above, so it gets a bit crowded at times.

The three young budgies that hatched last year are all doing well, and there are more eggs in the nesting boxes now, so we may have more babies in there soon. The canaries have had mixed results. The breeding female has laid several clutches with only two babies surviving to maturity. She has two more babies now, so we are hoping they will survive.

The Gouldian Finches are delightful to watch. I persuaded Ken to put them all in one aviary (he had the young ones separated from their parents), and they are all getting along just fine. In fact there are eggs in both nest boxes, so we may have even more young ones soon! This photo shows the four males and two females in their aviary, and there are 3 more immature Gouldians still in the other finch aviary. They will join their flock when they colour up later this year.

One day later...

Great news - four baby quails hatched today! I'll try to get some photos in the next few days.

December report.

It has been a busy year in our aviaries - I don't know if the end of the drought has anything to do with it, but we've had many new babies, some of which didn't survive, but there were new ones hatching all the time.

The 12 eggs in the budgies' nest book only yielded three fledglings, of which there are a heap of photos here. I couldn't stop myself with the camera yesterday; we had them out of the aviary and were playing with them for ages (they are too young to fly away).

The two Gouldian juveniles are colouring up beautifully, and there are two more babies in the nest. They probably won't fledge for a few weeks.
Two canaries survived from the second lot to hatch, and they are just about fully grown. There are two more young ones in the nest, and we are crossing our fingers that they will survive, as the mother doesn't seem to be looking after them as well as she did with the previous clutch.

The quails have had several lots of eggs, with only one hatching. It survived for a couple of months, but eventually died. We suspect it was because of the cold at the time. Even though we brought it and the mother inside, it wasn't enough. She is now sitting on yet another clutch of eggs, so we'll just have to wait and see.

The Zebra finches have always got babies, so there's nothing new to report on them!

Oops! Nearly fell off!

That's better.

I love the colours of this blue and grey male, waiting for his mate to come out of the nest box.

You can see why budgies are called Love birds - isn't that sweet!





The bird on the left is a mature male, unrelated to the young ones. His face should be all black, but he has been moulting, and the feathers haven't yet come back completely. The bird in the centre is the juvenile female and the one on the right is the juvenile male. The female is going to have a black face, but we aren't sure about the male - it won't be black; possibly red or yellow, depending on who the parents were.
(Please ignore the date imprint on these photos - they were all taken this weekend, but I hadn't figured out how to change the date on the camera!)

Three days later.

Nature really is incredible. Baby birds grow so fast, you could almost set up one of those time lapse cameras in the aviary and watch them grow overnight! The baby zebra finches have nearly doubled in size, and you can see their little beaks gaping open waiting to be fed.


I had to very patient to get these next photos; finches are never still! The finch on the left is one of our immature Gouldians. These birds take about a year to develop their full colours. This one is just starting to show the mauve on his chest. The one in the middle is a Zebra finch, and on the right is a mature Gouldian.

If it is a male, he will look like his Dad in this pic.


This is our Diamond Firetail Finch - so called because of the brilliant red feathers under his tail that can only be seen when he is in flight. One day if I'm patient enough, I may get a pic of him in flight.


I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the baby canaries this week. From barely feathered little creatures, they were out of the nest and flitting around on the floor of the aviary within a few days! This was taken the day before they fledged.

Early November in the aviaries.

The Zebra Finches seem to breed all year round, but we don't usually see them this small. The mother made a nest in a feeding basket (the white things are cuttlefish), so her babies were hatched out in the open instead of in their usual nestboxes.


The Ménage à trois canary family are busy. We have one male and two females, one of which has just hatched five babies. One baby fell out of the nest and didn't survive, but the other four appear to be doing well.



Ken finally put two nest boxes in the budgies' aviary, and they have been excitedly checking them out ever since. There are nine eggs in one, but we have no idea who the mother is, as several budgies go in and out of there all the time!

September bird news.

Spring is here, and with it comes the urge to mate. Our Silver Quails have laid five eggs, and the female is sitting on them all the time, which is a good sign. Her first clutch wasn't successful, as she laid them too early in the season, and it was too cold. Despite bringing the only surviving baby inside, he eventually died, so we are hoping now that winter is over, she will successfully rear this clutch.

The budgies have been laying eggs all over the floor of their aviary because there are no nest boxes in there. Ken doesn't want them to mate, because they are all brothers and sisters, except for the father of all of them, and two males that he bought a while ago. He intends to put those two unrelated males into a separate aviary with some of the females, but hasn't got around to it.

The new pair of Gouldian finches he bought a month ago have bonded, and are sitting on eggs, as are the original pair. So we are hoping for a new little flock in a few weeks. The first pair of babies are still in the adjoining aviary, with an unrelated male Gouldian, which Ken hopes to pair up with one of them, if they are females. Here is one of the males sitting outside his nest box waiting for the female to emerge so he can take his place minding their eggs.


The Zebra Finches as usual have eggs all over the place. Not just in the five nests we supplied them, but they pick up all the grasses and leaves on the floor and make new nests in feeding baskets and wherever else they can find a spot! This one has build hers in a little wire basket meant to hold seeding grasses for them to eat!