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.
