Blue Headed Cordon Bleu (Blue Capped Waxbill)

If you have ever seen the blue cap male in his courting dance and noticed the way he fans out his feathers at the front of his forehead forming a type of cap, you will understand why he is called the blue cap.

Blue caps are an African waxbill one of the two cordon species available in Australia; the other is the red-cheeked cordon bleu, a beautiful bird in its own right, which is an easier bird to keep and breed and more more readily available than the blue cap.

With blue caps I have found the following breeding methods to work particularly well for me and I have had pleasing results through putting them into place.

Often breeders will have a pair of birds; lose the hen and try and replace the hen. It is probable the main reason the hen died was that she was worn out laying infertile eggs and subsequently died of egg bind. To replace the hen for this cock would probably result in the same death of a replacement new hen. The best scenario would be to use a new pair – discard the old cock.

If the birds are paired up too young they will eagerly go to nest but will lack the maturity to be fertile so by the time they reach sexual maturity the hen may have laid 10 to 20 infertile eggs. Then if you are approaching the colder months serious problems can result in loss of hens, e.g. egg binding. It is best to use fully matured birds or to be sure use an older cock.

If you pair up young birds and they successfully breed, use them for 6-8 months or 2-3 nests – then remove the blue caps to a resting aviary or a holding aviary. You can get away with continually breeding cordons for 2-3 years but not with blue caps.

Use a new pair in the breeding aviary. If you have a nice pair that did not breed e.g. laid many infertile eggs – rest that pair but after 2-3 months try an old hen with a new mature young cock. Don’t persevere with an old cock because there is a 90% chance the cock is infertile not the hen. Using a new cock with an old hen is a good practice anyway because you can use an old hen up to 5-6 years reaching back into the gene pool on her side and using a new unrelated cock. But this can only happen if you rest the hen every 6-8 months for at least 2-3 months.

Cocks can be rejuvenated as well with rest and a low fat diet. Unless the cock bird is really special it is better to use a new mature young cock, which you should have an abundance of choice as most pairs breed more cocks than hens.

Basically, if a pair have not bred in 12 months or even 6 months, they are probably not going to breed. This applies to most finches. Don’t leave a non-breeding pair in an aviary for too long. Change them or replace them.

This blue cap hen bred in 2010 is the best blue cap hen i have ever bred.

Bird Management:

Blue caps don’t need to be kept in small cages on their own. They can be kept in reasonably large cages with other birds. They do not like to be over crowded. For example my aviaries are 6m x 1.8m x 2.1m H with one pair blue caps and three other pairs of species.

They can be housed in adjoining aviaries. They don’t fight through the wire. They are a very placid bird.

The key is to arrange aviary fittings so there is not too much competition for nesting sites, e.g. If you have 4 pairs in one aviary blue caps will nest in a wire basket usually at the front. Tri coloured parrot finches will nest in a nest box; yellow-wing pytilias will mostly always use a 4” plant pot on its side attached to the wall and green singers will use a small salmon tin attached high up on a wall.

These four species get on really well but singers are best in alternate flights to stop fighting on the wire.

You will always have more success as an aviaculturist if you take the time to work out individual needs of different species.

Nesting for blue caps usually only require semi circular wire cylinders -300mm wide, 200mm deep 900mm high lightly filled with semi-dry green panic grass, November grass and feathers are all they need. The nest will nearly always be at the bottom of the cylinder facing the front of the aviary.

Blue caps are offered a range of foods as are all my other birds but their preference is red panicum, live food, green seeding heads and sliced lebanese cucumber. Fresh or frozen seed heads of red panicum or white french millet will be eagerly consumed.

Good luck with your efforts and I hope this article helps.

When the cock was introduced to this hen from picture above. They both went straight to nest and have bred two lots of young and look to be of very good colour.

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Again, sow seed in trays for an early start. I always find that a seedling 75-100 mm high sown into the garden bed will always get ahead of the weeds and weeds in the summer are not as friendly to the bird keeper as the weeds in the winter. Freshly picked half ripe millet heads (WFM or red panicum) are better than anything you can give your birds.

Most birds enjoy the change in weather from cold to warm and the arrival of spring triggers the Siskins and canary type birds into breeding.

For the red and yellow Siskins both adults and young – these have been in the holding cage since Mar-April – and are now showing signs that they are getting ready to be moved out into the breeding aviaries. The first signs in the Siskins are usually the cocks start sparring up to each other. The Siskins when paired and placed out in the breeding aviary if a small bed of dry chick weed is placed in the fork of the brush they will nearly always build their nest on top of this. Supply plenty of cut and teased hessian.

Blue caps that have been spelled in the same way through the winter are ready to be put back out into the breeding cages.

Young Blue caps have been housed with cocks and hens separate and when paired up and put out into the breeding cage there follows a very intense display by both the cock and the hen as they bow to each other and tails twitching towards each other.

This way by separating the cocks and hens pairing is almost instant and within a few days nest building will begin.

EDIT: We are in the process of getting together some photos and video of the Siskin sorting process. If you sign up for our newsletter, we will show you some picture as soon as they are ready!

Winter is the worst time for finches as they are very tender at this time of the year so you must give them as much time and effort as possible to maintain their health and well being.

Seeding grasses and freshly grown seed has enormous nutritional value. This is the one thing that all aviaculturists try to duplicate with all sorts of soft food mixes and vitamins, but nothing is as good as the real thing. You can’t overfeed green seeding grasses and this is one of the hardest things to do especially as the collection gets larger.

Panic Veldt Grass (Ehrharta erecta)

The problem is that seeding grasses are in short supply at the moment but there are some varieties still available. On a recent visit to a local beach I observed red brow finches feeding on velt grass seed heads just behind the dune area. This is a flat growing grass that seems to prefer shady areas and if the seed heads are gathered they are a very good source of nutrition for the birds.

Winter grass is starting to set seed as well as the velt oats. Chickweed is one of the best of all green feeds for birds and is usually abundant in most gardens from now on for the next few months.

The red and yellow siskins and most other birds in the holding cages have enjoyed the seed heads of the basil plants, late in the season when the basil goes to seed the long heads are fed before they dry off, the seed is plump and light yellow in colour.

Seedling Trays of Red Panicum etc, ready for planting out in Spring

Winter is not a good time to plant so ideally preparation should have started in May, but if you are growing food for your birds some of the seeds can be sown now and will be ready in the early spring these include canary, phalaris, rape, niger, rye and oats. Most of the millets are warm weather crops but you can get an early start if the seed is sown in seed trays and transplanted out later. Red pannicum will grow here most of the year as will jap millet, white french millet will germinate in another month. Corn can also be grown in trays if sown in August it can be transplanted out for an early start.

The small wild sunflowers that grow profusely in Western NSW on the roadsides can be sown now. These will start to flower in spring and continue all the way through to Autumn. If picked when the petals start to fall and fed to the birds, yellow and red siskins will almost live and breed exclusively on these. Any excess can be picked and frozen to feed through the winter.

The freezing and storing of seed heads can be practised all year. Any gardener will tell you of the feasts and famines so don’t be reluctant to freeze any excess of seed heads in November and feed out in January for example, it is the next best thing. No need to thaw them out, just feed them. The use of the freezer provides a great source of seeding heads at any time of the year, not only the winter.

Useful Links:

• Ehrharta longiflora Sm.: FloraBase: Flora of Western Australia
• Panic Veldt Grass (Ehrharta erecta)
• Round the Bend » Winter Grass

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The following bird varieties are ready to be sold:

• Blue Headed Cordon Bleu (Blue Caps)
• Tri Coloured Parrot Finches
• Yellow Wing Pytilia Finches

If you are in the market for these types of finches, please contact us as soon as possible. We have already sold a few pairs so don’t delay!

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.

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.

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.

My Experiences in Breeding Star Finches:

I have always kept star finches as part of my general collection. These are definitely one of my favourite species of finches and I have always tried to maintain good strains of quality birds.

I have kept the red stars continually from 1982 when I lived at my first house in Lennox Head right up until now at Broken Head. Since those early days I have not introduced any normals, only one yellow fawn cock bird and two red fawn hens. I keep normal and fawn in both red and yellow head colours.

There has always been the argument about cinnamon star finches versus fawn star finches, but no-one seems to be able to accurately point out the difference. The birds I refer to as fawns I do so because 15 or more years ago a breeder gave me, as he called it “a yellow fawn cock bird” and the following year gave me two red fawn hens. All the offspring from these birds have been recessive and not sex-linked.

I use normal red-faced stars as a base bird and breed these birds to yellow-head or fawns to produce split birds. These split birds are put back to normal yellow-heads and fawns in either colour. I have always believed that it is necessary to keep breeding back to normal red-faced stars because continual breeding of mutation to mutation will definitely weaken and diminish the quality of the species. If the birds are good enough I will breed yellow to yellow or fawn to fawn, but the following year I will put those juveniles back to the normal red-faced. In the last couple of years the fawns have been some of the better birds I have bred, but I will still put these back to normals.

When selecting birds for breeding either in cock birds or hens, I look for the obvious birds that have the most size, type and head colour. With this I look for good star patterning and richness of chest yellow. The hens, I choose by the amount of colour on the face because with the stars the more head colour the rest follows. The birds with the most head colour will be the better birds and more likely to produce the better offspring. I have seen some star finches particularly the reds that not only have the red on the face, but red below the face on the chest. I have always regarded this as a fault and don’t think it is desirable – my personal opinion.