It has been a long time coming, but the Broken Head Aviaries Online Shop has now been launched.

Ken has been working on his photos, and has been testing the best way to present them. The final product is a print on high quality photo paper in a variety of sizes and framing options.

The photos are available in the following sizes:

• 6 inch by 4 inch
• 8″ X 6″
• 12″ X 8″ (A4 print size)

The framing options are:

• Print only (unframed)
• Carded and backed.
• Carded, Backed and Framed (Hardwood frame with a glass front)

All photos are of birds taken at Broken Head Aviaries. The photos are beautifully presented and would make a great present (especially just before Christmas!!).

Click here to visit the store to check out the range of Australian Finch Photos.

In Australia, the Pytilia family of finches are popular members of many collections. Most finch breeders confidently talk about Melbas, (green winged Pytilias), Auroras (Red Winged Pytilias), the Yellow Winged Pytilias, which have yellow wings and a red head, but seem to struggle on the details when it comes to the black sheep of the family - the Red Faced Red Winged Pytilia.

The Yellow Wing Pytilia – (Pytilia hypogrammica) seems to be the closest relation to the Red Faced Red Winged Pytilia, so close in fact that many arguments have formed over whether or not it is actually a separate species.

There are several schools of thought on where the Red Faced Red Winged Pytilia came from. Some believe that it is a colour mutation of the Yellow Wing Pytilia, and therefore does not warrant being known as a separate species.

Others believe that because of the closeness of the natural range of the Yellow Wing Pytilia and the Red Winged Pytilias, the Red Faced Red Winged Pytilia is a hybrid of the two species.

The third theory is that it is in fact a unique species. The Red Faced Red Winged Pytilia is referred to as Pytilia hypogrammica lopezi, but information regarding the source of this classification is not that clear.

In Australian Aviculture the Yellow Wing Pytilia is the rarer of the Pytilias and probably the hardest to breed. The Red Faced Red Winged Pytilia is more common and easier to breed but still a delightful bird.

I have always regarded the Red Faced Red Wing as a separate species, although could not confidently back this up with scientific facts. I would like to think it was a separate species and with my experience in breeding both species there does seem to be differences between the Yellow Wing and the Red Faced Red Wing.

Because of the limited number of exotic bird species that we have here in Australia, it would be nice to keep them as two separate species. If anyone has an opinion on this matter or any related readings, please leave us a comment.

It has been quite a while since the last update on the website, but I have still been working hard on the birds and bits and pieces.

A lot of people often ask when I am going to put new photos on the website, so I have finally gotten around to it.

Check out the following links for the first sets of photos.

• Diamond Finch Photos
• Gouldian Photos
• Painted Finch Photos

Hope you enjoy. I will be adding more detail at a later date.

Star Finch

(neochmia ruficadua)

Found across Northern Australia from the Pilbara, Western Australia to Cape York. The Star Finch species is well established in Australian aviculture. Although there are probably several sub-species of this finch, the birds we keep are probably a mixture of some from the west and some from the east.

These birds are in the easy to keep and breed category; fairly cheap, readily available and compatible with most finches.

The normal star finch has a red head including beak and red barring on the tail with olive wings. The first mutation was the yellow-head star finch having the red on both head; beak and tail replaced by yellow, but retained the olive wings. The fawn star finch can have either the red head and tail or yellow-head and tail, but the wings are fawn in colour.

Habitat:

Star Finches are said to be found around creeks and waterways in the reeds and grasses that grow around them. This species is definitely a lover of this type of habitat, as in the aviaries they love to feed on the long grass seed stems of the green panic and other types of aviary grasses. If I throw green panic heads on the wire on top of the flight the stars will hang from the wire and feed on and also pull through the seed heads. Not all finches can do this, but it is also one of the first birds to land on the grass seed heads if thrown on the floor of the aviary.

Sexing:

The pairs are easily sexed as the star finch hen has very little colour under the chin even in well-coloured hens. The cock if looked at towards the beak has a very round circle of colouring from the forehead right around to the neck.

Breeding season:

Birds breed from February until November, but young fledged in the early part of the year do not fully colour until October/November, much the same as the gouldian finch. You will need some room to hold the juveniles for several months until they colour, because usually the good ones are bred early in the season, being the first young of new pairs, or fresh young of older pairs.

Nesting:

They like to build their own nest with usually fine grasses and green panic seed heads and lined with feathers, either in the aviary brush or in the grass or shrubbery growing in the flight. They build a very neat smallish oval upright nest with the entrance halfway up the side. Both sexes incubate the eggs and when approached the bird will stay in the nest with their face at the entrance hole to the last minute.

Feed:

Standard finch mix. They love soaked or sprouted seed. Will take boiled egg, live food when rearing young, but not necessary, but as much seeding grasses as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

I got a question via email the other day:

Hello. I am enquiring about purchasing some gouldian finches but have been informed that it is too cold to keep/breed them in an outdoor aviary in Sydney. I would appreciate your opinion. Thank you.

My first thought was to say try it and see. But this may not be the best answer, as disaster could follow.

If I was going to offer advice, as I live here on the North Coast of New South Wales, it is a bit hard to say what would be good for finches kept in Sydney.

I started my finch keeping in Sydney, keeping Western Australian Longtail Finches and Masked Finches in an outside aviary, but never Gouldian Finches.

I know for a fact that there are breeders in Sydney that keep and breed Gouldians successfully, but I am not as sure about the types of housing that these bird breeders use.

The best advice that I could give is to contact the local bird society or finch club and talk to the breeders that live in your local area.

By talking to members of bird clubs, you find out who the successful breeders are, and you can visit them and see how they do it. They will give you the tried and tested knowledge that I can only give to breeders in my local area.

There is nothing like visiting successful breeders and looking at what they have built and listening to what they have done to become successful a breeder.

Good Luck, and Let us know what you find out.

All the birds that have been listed on the Red Faced Parrot Finch page have been sold.

I will try and get some more birds for sale up there as soon as possible.

Thanks for your business!

I have updated the birds for sale section with the latest red faced parrot finches. You will see that they are all young birds, born after January this year.

The photos are of the actual birds for sale. They may not be the greatest photos of the bird, but I have tried to get the angle that shows the pied feathers on the pied finches.

If you would like to enquire, please note down the band number of the finch for sale, and contact us.

Click here to see the Red Faced Parrot Finches For Sale Page

It has been a little busy around here lately, but I am finally getting around to working on the site a little more. The winter is starting to die out a little (although today is rainy and cold) and aviaries need to be cleaned out and prepared for the coming breeding season.

Anyway, as things warm up and the birds look a little better, I will be taking a lot more photos for the website. The birds for sale section is a little light on at the moment, but with a bit of work with my camera in the studio you should get a better idea of the birds I have for sale.

Just thought that I would tell you about the editing software that I use. I have Adobe Photoshop, but it is quite expensive and not for everybody. In fact it is my sons, as he uses it for his web design work. But I am looking at Google Picasa at the moment, which you can find from the link below. It is free, and a small download, so it should do what you want to get the photos trimmed up for the web. I will look in to it more and give you a review.

I am going to give a plug to a new website that has just opened. The Breeders Market is designed and maintained by my son, and he has a pretty good idea of what is going on. He is both a web designer and a knowledgable bird enthusiast, so he know what will work for bird breeders such as my self.

The site contains a good bird breeder directory, and will feature articles on the finches, parrots, canaries, and many other types of pets and birds.

To get things started, The Breeders Market is offering five free premium listings in the breeders directory, which will give you the option of displaying photos and listing birds or products that you have for sale.

Well actually, make that four listings, because Broken Head Aviaries has just taken the first listing…

Check it out at www.breedersmarket.com.au

Of all the birds I keep I do not colony breed. With the exception of two pair of Gouldians per flight everything else is bred in single pairs. This is not to say colonies don’t work, it is saying it is not necessary.

The example is that if you have five pairs of a particular species in an aviary at the end of the year do you really know

• what has bred,
• what has had two or three nests,
• how many young has a particular pair bred,
• and what has not bred.

If you breed single pairs of species per aviary you know exactly what has happened in a particular season.

The most likely scenario for people who breed a colony of a particular species with another colony of species is hybridization. If you lose the odd bird from one species and the odd bird from another species, the likelihood of these odd birds pairing with the other odd birds is far greater and the unwanted hybrids will come from these pairings. If you breed single pairs and you lose one bird of a pair you know this very soon and are able to rectify the situation by providing a new partner or removing the odd partner.

If you lose a particular bird, do not be afraid to introduce a new partner because pair bonding only lasts until a new partner is introduced. A lot of people say finches pair for life, this is not true, as I have found in my experience if a bird is healthy and fit and loses its partner, it does not spend the rest of its life alone but will take the first mate that comes along.

Finches all over the world usually are a flock bird from just a few pairs to maybe flocks of hundreds or even thousands. If in the flock situation, a hawk or another predator attacks that flock and kills a bird, does the surviving partner of that bird take a new mate or does it not. I say it does.

In addition to this, if you have a particular pair that are bonded but are not breeding for example they may not be laying fertile eggs or just not really compatible, if you break that pair and put them with new partners this will be okay as long as you move the original pair as far away from each other as possible because an adjoining flight is not far enough. They will still sit side by side at the wire, but removed from each other and given new partners this will almost certainly prove fruitful for at least one of the pair. You will then be in a position to work out which of the birds was the problem as far as breeding goes.

In the single pair situation if a species breeds it is then up to the breeder as to how long the birds stay in with the parents. Early in the season I choose to take the young out of the aviary at least after the second nest has flown. This is obviously long enough for the birds to be with their parents as the parents’ attention goes to the new brood. It is not really a matter of 5-6 weeks as a standard, but when the parents have fledged the second nest. Towards the end of the season I will leave the young in with the parents longer, if overcrowding is not a problem. Of all the birds I keep, I don’t have any that are aggressive towards the previous young birds. Most times the previous young are removed from the parents sooner rather than later, to avoid the young being a distraction to the parents going back to nest if the parents have not already done so.

In the colony how do you ever work this out?

The colony young cannot be identified as positively as the young from a single pair. This is important for making up future pairs. It is very difficult to establish their parentage and blood lines if you don’t know exactly who the parents are.