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.
