Finch Fest

Happy Finch Chatter

Today all ten birds spent the day in happy chatter. It's a sweet sound and makes me smile. When I looked to see what all the quiet excitement was about, it was just normal life. Finches bounced from perch to perch with their muted, video-game "beep-beeps" and bathed, ate, drank, swung on their swings and fixed their nesting houses just so.

The explanation for the chorus of chatter came when I cleaned their cages. Only one egg today, from Fay who must have worked fast because I saw her out and about. That means all ten birds were out bopping around. No wonder I noticed a higher level of happy-happy, joy-joy. Egg-laying is quieter work that sidelines the girls for anywhere from twenty minutes to all day if they then sit on the eggs.

We got a bread machine a couple days ago--being the sandwich freaks we are. We think it's good bread, and apparently Tillie and Clay agree. They got their first taste today and gobbled holes right down to my pepper jack cheese. All the other birds then wanted some so badly, Dolly flew to the center of her cage and hovered to get my attention.

Finch Honeymoon Suite

Birds have "on" and "off" buttons--light and darkness. When the sun comes up or a light goes on, finches hop out of the nests and greet the day with joy. When the sun goes down or the lights go off, they trundle off to bed. After a bit of "we're going to bed now" chatter, they become so quiet and still, it's like there are no birds at all.

Male birds not only wake up when it's light, but are turned on by light. Here's a male zebra finch on a lampshade. Note the light shining on his nether regions, possibly heating them. If he turns around the other way, light shines in his face. Either way makes him good to go. Note him eyeing the female nearby. If she so much as blinks...

Wait, who cares if she blinks? All she has to do is hold still half a moment.

This lighted lamp has been the scene of many instant, intense trysts, often between married birds, just as often not.

Finch Bedding

Yesterday I read a warning online that you shouldn't use acrylic yarn as bedding for your finches. It's true that the tiny filaments can get wrapped around their legs and feet.

Here's our experience. We use yarn cut into short segments of up to two inches and the birds love it. The secret is to throw it away when it starts getting fuzzy. In the previous blog photo, you can see a tiny filament sprung loose on the doorway. That's what happens when the finches pick at it--which they love to do.

In their nests, they continually nibble doorways, arrange and rearrange the yarn inside, and hop in and out of the nests, so eventually the yarn becomes frizzy and of course, poopy. Toss out the old yarn when it's dirty and showing any sign of frizziness, replace it with fresh and please the finches no end.

Out of all our finches in both our flocks, we had one girl run into trouble with yarn--and she did it twice! Sparky lived in her cage at my house and got yarn around her right leg so badly, it looked like a leg warmer. We had to catch her and while I held her, Joe ever so gently unwound the surprisingly strong microscopic filaments. It was scary. We worried about the filaments cutting off her blood supply to her foot.

We wonder if she scrubbed her right foot forward and back in the nesting house like she was doing the hokey-pokey or something. She was a girl with half of the long middle toe missing from one foot. All three front toes were about the same length. You'd think yarn would more easily slip over that smaller foot, but oddly enough, we think it was her good foot that got the yarn troubles, so go figure.

Zebra Finch Photo Close-Up

This is Pearl and Al at Lucille's. Aren't they cute? Hard to believe they used to fight like it was a sport.

It's interesting that Pearl's eye has been fine and dandy since about day two of her living at Lucille's house. At my house it wanted to water at least every other day at best, and once looked really bad so that I dosed her with medicine.

Note Al is sitting on Pearl's left. That's allowed. When Lucille finds him on Pearl's right, near the eye that used to have a problem, she chases him away from her. It would only take a single second for him to peck her eye and make it sore again. We don't trust him.

We don't KNOW that he's the one who made her eye sore in the first place, but the balance of power got tilted when her eye got hurt. Suddenly she wasn't holding her own or sometimes winning. We do know he's too rough with babies. He tore up the beaks of newly-hatched babies so badly they bled, were malformed, and the babies eventually died. That's aggressive!

We'll never let him be a father again, and Pearl won't let him have sex with her again. He's a buddy--during the daytime while Lucille keeps watch. She makes him get away from Pearl at night, refusing to lock them into a cage together where Pearl would be at his sometimes terribly-untender mercy.

Huh. This post sort of wrecks the Happy Little Beepers way most finches usually behave. Rest assured I called these two the BattleBots because they weren't the norm. And that's all over now.

What if the whole problem was they didn't like it at my house? Yikes.

Out Damned Spot

This is the photo of Sandy when he had no spot. Feast your eyes and never speak of it again.

Sandy's Spot

In an earlier post I told how pied zebra finch Sandy had a black spot on his breast and how it disappeared when Lucille said she should call him Spot. I took a photo of him with his spot gone and wished for a "before" photo. Well, here's the spot back again.

Now for the weirdest part. Sandy let his spot grow back just fine as you can see in this photo. The minute Lucille asked him if he wanted his name to be Spot, he reached down to that black spot and started to yank at it! Apparently he does NOT want the name Spot and we must never mention it again.

The Sound of Finches Flying

Yesterday I stood in the flight path between the living room and the kitchen at Lucille's. That doesn't bother the birds a bit. They just swoop around me. But I noticed the sound of finches flying.

As expected, there's a soft feathery flutter sound. I presume that's the wing feathers interacting with air. But what I didn't expect is a sort of leathery flapping sound. Imagine holding a rubber swim cap--small, of course--and shaking it. That squeaky rubbery flap is what I heard as finches zipped past my head. Sometimes it almost sounds like their shoulder joints need oiled.

Squeaky-voiced Bess likes to "buzz the tower." Even when we're sitting down, she'll fly over us so close she sometimes brushes our hair. On the times she doesn't actually touch us, we feel the breeze of her passing. The only other bird that offered to touch us was Clay. He couldn't resist yanking hair, especially Lucille's when her hands were too full to shoo him.

A finch can sound somewhat like a ricocheting bullet when he talks while flying.

Sandwich-Eating Finches

Right after I wrote here for the second time about Tillie demanding bites of my sandwiches, she ignored sandwiches for two days. She turned up her nose, uh, beak at my cheese sandwich made with dark German bread, as if to say I could take that stuff and shove it.

I wasn't too surprised at her suddenly blowing cold on sandwiches. Why? Because I'd just said she loved them. Finches love to make a liar out of us when we say what they're like. But after a couple days, Tillie came back to demanding bites and seems to prefer the crust area now. But only when I hold it. She ignores a piece wedged through her wall.

Today I lost track of time while playing with Christmas presents. At quarter to five I was starved. Even though Christmas dinner at Jill's was coming soon I built a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I sat on a low stool to eat it, but Tillie beeped to remind me she wanted some. I moved to my sewing chair, took a big bite of the sandwich and held the rest against Tillie's cage wall. She and Clay dove in, but a chorus of loud, emphatic "chit chit's" arose from the other cages. I turned my head and found three of the four other girls practically hanging off their nearest cage walls demanding bread.

Have they been watching Tillie getting preferred treatment and decided they want in on the action? A few days ago I tried giving little white Sammy some sandwich against her cage wall, only to have her fly away, too nervous to come that close to my hand. Now with three more girls hanging on my every bite and Tillie's, I envisioned my sandwich-eating taking forever. I didn't want to hold it against three or four cage walls.

"Let me finish this and I'll give you bread," I told the other girls.

They refused to wait. "Chit! Chit!" These were emphatic, dead-certain chits meaning, "Bread! Now!"

"Okay, okay, I hear you." I set my sandwich down, fetched a new slice, broke it into four sections and doled it out. Before I could pick my sandwich up again, three girls were feasting.

All's Well With Fred and Dolly

Good news. I turned on the lights today and wham-bam, morning lovemaking. Fred and Dolly are back to normal.

The only unusual thing with them today had to do with the extra cage . I didn't put it away last night so it was still sitting there beside them. Dolly bounced in the corner of her cage nearest the other one and acted like she had to go over there. When she quit, Fred took her place and acted like he could go over there. They must have enjoyed having the run of the two cages pushed together yesterday.

I moved the empty cage away. (I'd like to say it's put away, but it's on the couch waiting to go upstairs. Did I mention I live in clutter?)

While I used the Juki industrial sewing machine on a leather project I shifted Clay and Tillie up there beside Fred and Dolly. Clay zipped close to his neighbors and crowed how he could go for Dolly, but that's Clay. Dolly didn't care what he said.

I put Clay and Tillie back on the Juki just to ensure we don't rattle the new equilibrium between Fred and Dolly. We were heading out to enjoy Christmas Eve at Jill's and wouldn't see what might happen. It seems to me I put Clay and Tillie on the Juki by themselves for a good reason. I just don't remember why.

Fred and Ed...The Odd Couple

Lucille bought Fred and Ed and Little Girl from a woman who got them from someone else. We've always been curious what kind of birds were around them and influenced them when they were hatchlings, because of their strange finch songs.

Fred's got the weirdest song of all our birds. His song is half mechanical as a cuckoo clock, half real boy, with a whistle thrown in the mix. The first few times we heard him we all laughed and marveled and stared at him while he produced it. We had to SEE him singing to believe such a sound could come from a living zebra finch, not a wind-up toy.

His brother Ed has the second weirdest song. It's not as mechanical, but is quite different also and apparently very impressive. Lucille's last few baby boys all aped Ed's song, so there were like five of him in the flock. We had to look to see who was crowing.

Now that the baby boys are getting older, they're adding their own little special touch to their songs. Andy makes the spitty raspberry noise at the end of his song, aping one of Lucille's other birds. Sandy has turned his Ed-derived song a bit inside out, now sounding like "Dee-Dee Dum." Randy's got Ed's song with Fred's big volume.

Last Friday when I was at Lucille's, Ed crowed at his mate, wanting sex. He twisted his tail to one side or the other as he did his courting crow and tracked her relentlessly across the floor, under the rocking chair and out again. He stood tall as he sang, with his head feathers arched, his eyes never leaving her, his tail turned this way, then that way. Watching him, one could almost envision a matador sweeping his cape behind him with great drama. I said to Lucille, "Ed's the only bird who turns his tail like that when courting."

I was wrong. Today I noticed Fred twisting his tail when he wanted Dolly. So that's two odd traits these brothers share.

Tess and Bess are Fred's daughters. We had hoped for boys, wanting more weird songsters. I kept them here at my house for about two months to imprint them with Fred's song before we knew they were girls. Tess has a normal voice. Bess did too, but not anymore. Now she sounds a bit like a squeaker-thing you find in a squeaker toy. She's a chip off the old Fred block.