Finch Fest

Karen Wilson Wehrle is a published writer who blogs about running a home business on Home Business Round Table, and blogs about knitting mistakes on Knits Gone Bad. She lists vintage collectibles on eBay, designs knitwear and knits Socks for Soldiers.

How two finch flocks, one caged, one free, become one.

My flock grew from 7 finches to 14 finches overnight. How? When my friend Lucille passed away, all her birds came to live with me.

Yes, we each had fewer birds than ever back then. Suddenly having twice as many  birds made for a lot more noise at my house. Besides my cages stacked on my table, I had her cages stacked on my blindstitch hemmer.

How did the birds feel about it?

They enjoyed so many neighbors. Most of them already knew each other because Lucille and I swapped birds back and forth quite often. Anytime a girl or boy wasn't happy, that bird came to my house or went to her house. Often they'd settle in quite happily in their new home.

Why? Not sure.

Sometimes they acquired a new mate or got away from an old one. Sometimes they acquired a new cage. They're sensitive creatures who like one certain arrangement of cages better than another, or preferred one room in Lucille's apartment over another.

She had an enormous living room with wide windows. We thought sure they'd love that room, but they seemed frightened by birds they saw outside. They much preferred her tiny kitchen or her little corner bedroom. They loved a bathtub on a sunny windowsill. They would make water fountain splashes that left the window dripping with their marathon bathing.

Right now I have only six finches.

Why? Old age and a tale of two cats.

Shortly before our semi-blind cat passed away we got a black kitten who was thrown away with his siblings out in the country near a friend's house. My daughter took a black long-haired girl kitten. We took the black short-haired runt boy kitten.

Um, he can see quite well with those big round yellow eyes.

What was I thinking? Turns out he LOVES finches. He clambered up the flight cages and slept atop them when he wasn't stalking or rushing at them. Poor birds!

As he grew from a wee runt into a ten-pound excellent mouser, we had to secure cages together with bungee cords to prevent disasters. Things have settled down now, but we had a few upsets.

Turns out our new cat can catch a bird quicker than we can. He doesn't hurt them. He'll give them right back, but there's a problem. About a day and a half later, each bird he ever had in his mouth up and died. Bacteria?

They'd be fine the rest of the day they were caught, that night and all the next day. But by the next morning, we'd find them dead in their nest. Sad to say, four birds went that way.

I sold a few.

What's left are the aging ones. Clay lived to a ripe old age, beyond anything we thought possible. I think he was pushing twelve years when he passed.

I have Lucille's two society finches. We renamed Augie (she got him in August) to Dagwood, because he has a feathery cowlick on his head. Not exactly spikes like Dagwood Bumstead, but close enough.

I have Del and he's rejoined with Dina, a mate who once rejected him. They're happy together this time. At least so far!

I just separated Randy and Lynn because Randy picked her feathers out worse and worse. I wasn't convinced he was to blame until the back of her head got somewhat bald. There's no way she pulled those out herself. I expected a ruckus when I separated them, but they're happy apart.

She's regrowing feathers, thank goodness. She doesn't like me looking close, but I can see a single stupid feather sticking out the center of her naked breast despite her nervous flutters. I can't wait for her to look pretty again.

I'm sorry I didn't move him out sooner. At least our weather has warmed up so I don't worry about her getting cold at night without all her feathers.

So that's how two flocks, one caged, one free, became one flock.

They're all caged and now seem safe from the cat. Fingers crossed. Knock on wood. Bungee cords are a fabulous invention. Who knew they could save bird lives?

A Mate, A Mate, A Mate!

When last we spoke, Andy and Randy lived together because there were no females for them.  No more.

I bought two females at the pet store 30 miles away and put them in a nearby cage so I could let the girls each pick which guy she wanted.  At first it seemed they weren't interested in the fellows at all.  They were loving the huge cage.   

I make my own cages out of half-inch hardware cloth 26" long, 15" deep and 17" high.  So far every zebra finch who has come to my house has taken one look and moved in like these cages are mansions.  Any bird that needs to go live at Lucille's takes a look at the little transport cage and says no way.  I have to catch the bird to shift it.  But I digress.

The girls eventually selected their mates.  Randy's new mate didn't let him have sex with her for a day or so, then she squealed like a pig the first time they mated.  Weird.  So we call her Boopsie.

The other girl was such a fidgety nervous little thing that I call her Fidget.  These girls are egg-laying machines!  They often lay two eggs in one day.  I keep filching them as I don't want more finches.

Randy and Boopsie were together, and Andy and Fidget are still together.  What's up with Randy and Boopsie?  She was with him a few months and seemed happy, then suddenly she was done with him.  She did nothing but chase, chase, chase him.  So I took her to Lucille's house to see if she wanted one of her males.

She wanted no male at all.  Okay, fine.  Meanwhile poor Randy became depressed.  When I cleaned the cages, his bottom paper would be clean except for a pile of droppings in the back corner where he was sitting on a perch all day long.  Randy's the one I call the trapeze artist because when he's with a female he plays with his swing all day long.  No swinging happened at all, so I took him to Lucille's house to see if he might chirk up seeing some other finch faces.

I brought Boopsie back where she moved back into a big cage with great joy.  And Lucille's Lynn--a finch who enjoys hatching babies behind Lucille's back--thought Randy was a fine figure of a man.  Lynn doesn't stay with any mate for very long, so her dumping one in favor of Randy didn't surprise us.  I hope she sticks with him longer though.  He's had many mates so far in his life what with girls dying on him or dumping him.

So suddenly Del was a bachelor again, so I brought him home and the noise level in my house went way up.  In about a week I noticed Boopsie clinging to her cage wall to get close to him.  So I offered her the opportunity to move into his cage and she moved in.  Now they're a pair.

And Del quit his loud calling.  Everybody's happy at the moment.  Gotta love that. 

The only bird who has no mate right now is at Lucille's.  He's Val, one of Lynn's surprise babies all grown up.  He's a pied bird who is mostly white but with bits of male color and finch markings here and there, and he seems content alone so far.  So far, our pied males have had trouble getting a female finch to accept them, so when he hollers for a mate we'll have to cross our fingers that a new girl will think he's cool.

That's the latest news in our finch version of Peyton Place.  Well, that and the society finches hatched one baby and they're actually feeding it!  Whee!  Whole other story. 

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First Society Eggs Didn't Hatch

The two newly-mated society finches laid five eggs within a few days of first meeting each other.  Augie, the bigger finch, took over sitting on the eggs 24/7.  The new, smaller society named Anna wasn't allowed to sit on them any more.  She moved to the double nesting house where she plugged one of the two doors completely shut with yarn.  She sat looking out the other door.  Nobody was sneaking in on her, by golly.

We waited two weeks or so, but no eggs hatched.  Lucille took them out, opened them up and discovered they hadn't even started to develop.  We think we've had that happen before to first-time would-be parents.  Perhaps a subsequent clutch of eggs will be fertile and will hatch.  It's been a couple weeks since and there are no new eggs yet.  Seems the societies are in no hurry.

I'm wondering if we've got the sexes backwards.  Lucille had the bigger bird for about a month during which it made sounds her other societies (girls) didn't make and it laid no eggs.  So we assumed Augie was a male.

We introduced the new smaller bird and within a few days eggs appeared in the nesting house.  We assumed Anna laid them.  We assumed Augie's taking over the brooding was just him being over-excited about the whole thing.  We've had male zebra finches chase their women back into the nest to sit on eggs as if the females weren't even allowed to take a second to eat, drink or stretch their legs.  Psycho papa syndrome.

But what if the eggs came from Augie?  What if the larger bird is the female, like is true with hummingbirds, for instance.  What if it was a coincidence that the eggs appeared when a second bird was added?  Lucille hasn't seen or heard them do a mating ritual, so we have no solid proof either way who is male or female or what!  Only the societies know and they're not talking.

These two want nothing to do with the zebra finches.  If a zebra wanders into their cage, the zebra gets chased out at once with great vigor.  We'd read that societies were snoopy and would help brood and raise the babies of other birds.  We've have no baby zebra finches since these societies came here, so we don't know if they'd do that, but it sure seems unlikely right now.

We'll have to wait and see who mounts who and if we get more eggs and if they hatch.  Anna still has three head feathers sticking straight up.  Augie is regrowing his tail feathers faster than she is.  Let's hope she doesn't yank them out again.

Zebra Finch Referee

There I was peacefully sewing and minding my own tailoring business when a horrible squealing erupted.  I looked up and saw Andy and Randy fly up from the floor of their cage where they'd just been side by side.

Who squealed?  Who hurt the other one and made him squeal?  I have no clue. 

It isn't that I didn't look.  I looked hard.  But you know what?  The boys spent the next few minutes looking at ME!  They stood on separate perches and cocked their heads and watched and waited as if my reaction mattered more than anything.  When I didn't say or do a thing, they came closer, cocked their heads again and watched me some more.

Whatever the fight was about, they didn't seem to care.  They didn't glance at each other.  Neither one preened to show me where he'd got bitten or anything.  Nope.  They just seemed to be holding their breaths awaiting something from me.

Did they expect me to holler at the abuser?  How could I when I didn't know which one did it?  Were they hoping I'd separate them?  Hmm.

I don't interfere in their lives THAT much, do I?  Of course not.  Well...these two guys might argue on that point.  After all, these are two fellows living together, tolerating each other, when they'd each rather have a female mate.  And they don't have a female because it's inconvenient to ME.

How selfish is that?  Just because I don't want more babies or a larger flock right now, they have to live like monks.  It's not fair.  Right? 

But if I did bring in two females for these fellows, I know Clay would no longer live happily with Sandy.  No sir.  Those two fellows live happily together now, but if more females came into the house old Clay would do his utmost to get at them.  I'm 99% sure, based on past experience with Clay's "Mine!  The females are all mine!" mentality.

Still it seems more than strange that Andy and Randy were more concerned with my reaction to their argument than whatever caused the fuss between them.  Weird!

Society Finch Match Up

Lucille had two society finches, but not the mated pair she wanted.  They turned out to be two girls.  We knew that after they laid a vast number of eggs and none of them ever hatched.  But we eventually decided they weren't full-blooded society finches and were possibly sterile.  They had pink on their beaks and more white on their bodies than the photos of society finches we'd seen.

So we think they were crosses between zebra finches and societies, and we read those were sterile.  They never ever played with yarn.  They weren't anywhere near as adventurous as the zebras.  All they wanted to do was sit on eggs.  And they were never ever going to hatch those eggs.  Poor girls.

Then one died.  Suddenly and without warning.  It's a finch thing, but still shocks us every time we find a dead finch in one of our cages.  The one that was left was the only society finch in a small flock of zebra finches--and it was lonely.  It took to raking all its seeds out of the dish and onto the floor.  It called all day for another society.  The nearest society finch was about thirty miles away in a pet store and us with an old car we don't like to take out of town except for dire emergencies.  So it was about a month before Jim was home with the truck and he and Jill went to DuBois running errands and stopped in at the pet store. 

They talked to a woman working there about needing a mate for a lonesome girl society finch.  So the woman tried to catch the biggest society finch, in hopes it would be a male.  Jill and Jim drove home, gave Lucille the finch and learned that her lonesome female had died that day, just an hour or two ago.  Just about the time they bought the mate for it!

So now there was a new lonesome society finch in the house.  This one wasn't so lonesome, though.  It seemed happier than the other one.  It wanted no part whatsoever of any of the zebra finches.  They had to keep away.

Then a dire emergency happened and I had to drive to Brockway, which is eight miles past DuBois.  On the way back I tried to figure out some way to maximize the value of the unexpected trip out and wondered what there was else we wanted to do next time out.  Ding-ding!  Get another society finch!  How could I have forgotten?

So I hit the pet store and told a young woman there the whole sad story of the previous purchase and my needs.  She remembered the story.  She was the one who selected the hoped-for-male finch for Jim and Jill!  So this time she aimed to catch the smallest society there, in hopes she'd be female.

There were three adult societies in the cage and one egg.  We didn't want to take the mother of the egg, but she said it was hard to tell who was the mother when they all three sat on it. 

Two of the finches had feathers sticking up on their heads.  One had three or four feathers sticking straight up from the top of the head, the other had some sticking up above the beak.  I didn't get a good look at the egg-sitter as she only peeked out briefly before they all flapped wildly with the attempted catching of one. 

After a minute of trying to catch one,  a bird flew right into the woman's hand.  She said that bird chose her, not the other way around.  I bought it.

When I got to Lucille's, she put the new one right into the cage with the other one.  And it turned out to be the one with straight-up feathers on top of its head.  And she didn't have much in the way of tail feathers, we noticed.  Lucille had named the first one Augie because he came to her in August.  If this new one turned out to be a girl, she would be named Anna because we got her on Jim and Jill's anniversary. 

At first Augie looked a bit apprehensive about this interloper and the new bird didn't know what to think at all.  Then she started eating gravel and grit.  And kept on eating it.  Lucille had to take it away so she wouldn't fill up on the non-nutrition out of nervousness. 

Within ten minutes it looked like they were going to get along fine.  Augie went into a nesting house and the new bird pecked at the yarn hanging out of it and he didn't mind. 

The next morning Augie had no tail feathers!

The new bird had pulled them all out and he never said a word about it.  Never hollered once.  Now neither one of them can fly.  When they come out of the cage, they land on the floor with a thump. 

We hope they stop pulling out feathers.  I'm going to send for something they have a petmedicinechest.com for feather plucking and see if it works in the case where one finch plucks out the feathers of another finch.  I think it was meant for self-plucking, but unless we separate these two societies, this is our best bet.  Stay tuned to find out if we have a mated pair and if they let their feathers grow back.

Who Goes There?

Al, the baby-killer zebra finch, beat up on Lynn one day last week and Lucille chased him out of Lynn's cage.  The next day Lucille discovered a dead boy and wondered who on earth it might be.  Identifying dead males finches is a problem when all the guys look identical.

Then she noticed the peacefulness in the bird room.  And she noticed Lynn had deserted her fledgling babies at long last and moved in with a new man.  Lucille thinks it's Del.  And the babies no longer holler and fuss.  They're cool with Mum being gone.  Interesting developments.

They prove that it was Al who died and that he'd been a trouble-maker, constantly threatening Lynn and the babies and not letting Lynn have Del.  Never mind that Lynn was beyond done with Al.  She beat him up the first time Lucille let Al back with her after he was banished for a couple weeks.

Lucille looked up our finch records and discovered that Al was seven years and seventeen days old when he died!  Our longest-lived finch yet.  Except Fizzy is older!  She's going strong, looks just the same as the day we got her.

Clay is a day or two younger than his brother Al.  Clay is so much better.  He was getting up five minutes later than everyone else and coming straight out of the nesting house and chasing Sandy.  So I put him on five drops daily of Systemajuv, the dose that keeps Tippy feeling fine.  Within a few days there was no chasing and he got up the same time as everyone else.  A couple days ago Clay crowed around and wanted sex.  I got distracted and didn't see if he got any, but Sandy was looking thoughtful about it, so it might have happened.

Now it's been at least a week since I started Clay on Systemajuv and both Clay and Sandy spend the day yanking on artificial leaves, making love, preening each other, eating, bathing, fixing their nesting houses--all good finchy fun.

And Lynn has herself a new and better man in Del who was a sweetheart mate to Dot until she died.  He's not the type to beat up on women and children, so Lynn will be pleased. 

Her babies are happy living together and going through puberty.  So far it's still looking like the darker one is a boy and the one with white on the wings is a girl.

All is well for the moment in our two flocks.  Did I tell you about the new society finch?  Next time.

Finch Baby Tossing

Here's a photo of Lynn, the momma bird down on the left, and her two babies.  They're in a panic because I'm pointing a camera at them.  Here's their story.

One day while cleaning cages Lucille discovered something in one of the dishes, maybe the grit and gravel dish.  It was a baby bird.  Shocked, she assumed it was dead and was doubly shocked to see it move.  She put it back into the nesting house where she discovered another live baby, smaller than the first.  She hadn't realized the parents were incubating eggs.  In the following days, the babies were thrown out over and over again, especially the bigger one.  She kept putting them back over and over again.

Then one day she noticed the bigger one's upper beak wasn't pointy like it should be.  She took it downstairs to show Jill who saw there was a bit of blood between the beak and the little baby's face.  Yow!  One of the parents was not only tossing babies out daily, but beating up on the one.  Which parent was doing it?

Unable to determine from watching, because they wouldn't misbehave while she looked, she decided to haul the father out of there.  Bingo.  The babies stayed put in the nesting house, except when they wanted to come out on their own.  They wanted to do that a lot.  Having been out so often already, they had no fear of coming out.

Mother Lynn fed the babies by herself nicely for a week or more.  Lucille wondered if she needed a break or help and put the father back in and watched to see if he'd help.  He didn't get a chance.  Lynn beat the hell out of him!  She seemed to have noticed child-rearing done right versus his tossing and brutality and she was angry with him.  So he came out again real quick.

And it dawned on Lucille that the father must be Al.  We never let Al mate any more after we labeled him Al, the baby killer.  But now that Lucille can't see too well and the boys look identical, she has trouble telling who is who. 

So those babies are lucky to be alive!  Al's previous babies died as a result of his brutality.  The older baby has white on its wings and white dots on its head.  Cute, like Fizzy.  There's a little cowlick on the back of its head which may or may not have come about as a result of all the tossings.  The worst damage is the slightly shorter upper beak.  Thank goodness the baby can eat on its own and preen pretty good.  It won't die from the slight deformity.  Phew!

We're delighted to have a bird with white on the wings.  Fizzy, our first female and still going strong, has white on her wings and we love the look.  The only other finch with white on her wings was Dot, our flock heroine.  Now we hope this is another wonderful female.

Now we eagerly await discovering what sex these two babies are.  We need females.  We have unmated males galore.  Let's hope they're not two more boys.

P.S.

Update upon taking the photo.  The darker baby is the one in the nesting house and it's a male.  There are brown and white spotted feathers starting to show on each shoulder.  So far the one with white on the wings could still be female.  Too soon to know about her for sure at five or six weeks.

Finch Alternate Lifestyle

Several months ago, Fay decided she didn't like Randy any more, so she moved to Lucille's house.  Sandy's mate Little Girl up and died without warning a couple months ago, leaving me with five males and one female zebra finch in my flock.  I had them in five cages.  Four of the huge flight cages held one lonesome boy each.  Having lost a neighbor lady to flirt with, Clay took to sleeping a lot.  Randy didn't holler for a new mate.  Andy didn't either.  I got tired of cleaning five cages for six birds and wondered if I dared put boys together.

Putting males together has never worked well for me in the past.  One would pretty soon get aggressive with the other and chase, chase, chase.  I hate that.  But I remembered that Clay used to mount Sandy when they lived at Lucille's.  Let's face it, Clay would mount everybody who held still a second.  He didn't care that pied Sandy was a boy.

So I decided to risk putting those two males together.  Clay moved in with Sandy almost the moment I shoved the cages together with the doors open.  And he explored Sandy's cage, all excited, but seemed to ignore Sandy.  Sandy observed the interloper with no alarm.  Fine!

So I risked putting Andy and Randy's cages together to see which one might move in with the other.  Andy's a quiet fellow.  Randy's the trapeze artist who clings to the front wall until his tail is a rag while he yanks on a swing, then jumps on it, off it, and starts all over again.  I think Andy moved in with Randy, but I'm not sure.  In any case, they shared the cage with no dramatics.  Fine!

I went through the next couple of days with somewhat bated breath, hoping the boys would get along.  My theory was with only one female in the house, and she and her mate on top of the other cages and out of sight, the males might tolerate living with each other without fighting.  And that proved to be true.

Within a couple days, Clay was preening Sandy.  Within a couple weeks, Sandy preened Clay.  Now they take turns making love with each other.  After some excited talk, Clay will lean forward and shake his tail in invitation, Sandy will mount him, then Clay will mount Sandy.  Or vice versa.  They're happy together for the most part.  Once in awhile Clay will chase Sandy in the early morning, but that's just Clay being over-aggressive as always.  He no longer sleeps the day away.  Instead he's been yanking up the flooring paper with the energy of a youngster.  Never mind that he's my oldest bird.

Andy and Randy just live in the same cage.  It took them awhile to share the same perch.  They both tend to sleep a lot.  Randy doesn't play with the swing at all.  The only way I can tell them apart is by size.  Randy is bigger than Andy.  They never have sex.  They'd likely like mates, but they're getting along and I don't want to increase my flock size again.

Lucille felt the same way, but got two more surprise babies.  I'll talk about them in the next posting.

New Finch Cage Setup

Here's a photo of the way my finch cages are set up right now.  I have eight zebra finches: three couples and two bachelors.  Paul and Tippy are upstairs, pied Sandy (not Spot!) and Little Girl are in the middle and Randy and Fay are downstairs.  Andy is on top of Clay on the TV.  I think in the photo only Sandy, Little Girl, Andy and Clay are visible.  You'd probably need a magnifying glass to see them.

A few days after Squeaks died, Randy became Fay's new mate.  He moved in to her cage and they lived happily enough together for a couple weeks, but no sex.  It was like they were roommates.   She enjoyed having the company.  He enjoyed exploring a new cage.  Sex didn't seem to cross either of their minds.

Well, that's changed.  He nailed her good yesterday.  She chased him around some last night.  And Randy's back to swinging.

He's the zebra finch who has his tail worn down from clinging to the side of the hardware cloth cage and yanking on the swing.  When he does that, his tail goes through the openings in the cage wall and frays.  He doesn't care.  He's having fun.

When he lived alone, he didn't swing.  We began to wonder if he didn't feel like it, or if he felt there was no point if he didn't have a female to show off for. 

At the moment everyone seems really happy.  I have all five cages together.  The three cages containing couples are stacked on the table, and the two bachelors' cages are stacked on the TV that's on the table.  I was concerned that Paul wouldn't like Andy's cage beside him, because Andy's cage is a half-step higher than Paul's.  For awhile Paul wasn't happy unless his cage was highest of all.  Now it seems he and Tippy enjoy having a neighbor.  Andy certainly enjoys having neighbors after being off by himself on the Juki for months.

There's all kinds of excited chatter among the five cages, so apparently this is a happy arrangement.  Everyone's feeling fine.  Tippy is thriving on a regimen of five drops of Systemajuv Monday through Saturday and ProBac Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  It's been weeks since she has exploded diarrhea everywhere.  Thank goodness!  She feels good enough that she's laying eggs regularly again.

Her mate Paul has an overgrown beak.  He has a slender point sticking out in a hooked curve, so narrow and thin it looks like it could easily break.  I've been waiting for it to break, because they freaked out so badly when I tried to catch him to trim it last time.  I'm going to have to catch him when he's asleep and trim it off because it's not breaking off and it looks like he could put somebody's eye out if he's not careful.  He eats fine, yanks on a swing, transports egg shells up from the floor into the nesting houses or, better yet, drops them with a crash to the floor.  Great fun.

I don't know why he developed an overgrown beak after all these years trouble-free.  I'm experimenting with Vita-Pak and various foods to see what nutrient he may be needing more of.  Haven't discovered a cure yet.