Benj,
Good comments. Your assessment seems pretty good to me. Plus of course the
fact that there was more than one of them. I think that caged birds that
escape, can get so geographically confused that they lose each other and
don't stay together, even though most Aussie finches are very social and do
not like to be separated from others of their species.
Also about the colour patterns. To which I would add some small bits that
are not inconsistent with what you wrote. Domestic zebra finches have been
bred in more variants than just pied, or colour involving dilutions. Also
whilst there may be standards for "show birds", that does not mean that all
aviary bred birds are like that, any more than all dogs are identifiable to
registered breeds (well not quite as much as that). Immelman's (now old)
book about finches I think described differences in wild type zebra finches
to domestic grey ones and I think he mentioned the white abdomen, I don't
have time to look now.
I can inform whoever that caged finches are far from devoid of fear of
sparrowhawks, falcons and butcherbirds, having seen that often. The
predators don't even need to be alive. Years ago I put a stuffed Barn Owl
and Brown Falcon (separately) on my aviary, with finches, with and without a
bag on their head. The reaction was so dramatic that I had to remove them
quickly.
There is a nice and very detailed book just about the zebra finch, written
by Dr Richard Zann, who has spent years studying them in wild and captivity.
Philip
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