Western Australian Longtail Finch
March 29th, 2006
These birds are one of my favourite finches. I have always had them. The yellow beak defines them from the eastern race, the Hecks Longtail with its somewhat stronger tones of colour and the distinctive red beak. I do not keep the Hecks as I find I need as much room as possible to keep as many single pairs of WA Longtails as is needed to keep the strain going strongly. They are a relatively easy bird to keep on a diet of mixed seed, separate trays of red pannicum, termites, clean water, seed and grasses.
They will nest in a nest box or a 10 cm x 20 cm wire cylinder, but prefer to build their own nest midway to high up in the brush. They need a roosting nest so if when they are moved from one aviary to another, or to the holding cage you should make sure they have sufficient roosting facilities.
They don’t need to be bred in a colony; just one pair per aviary I find is the best way.
Sexing from a visual perspective may seem simple when you see the cock with a big round throat spot and the narrow pear shaped throat spot of the hen. There are some hens that have a very large throat spot and there are some cocks that have the small throat spot. The problem is defining the special hen from the inferior cock. Some people say that when the young are first out of the nest they can pick the cocks from the hens, but this is still only picking the good cocks and inferior hens. What we should do to improve the birds is to find those good hens and mate them with the good cocks. The easy to pick hen should be discarded, that is the hen with the narrow throat spot, because if you breed this bird with a good cock bird, chances are you will not improve the quality of the birds. The improvement in overall quality will come from the hard to pick hens.
Question:
How to pick the good hen from the inferior cock bird by not using just the throat spot?