Yes. Many finches build roosting nests, not for breeding. I checked out the pet shop at the Fyshwick market yesterday that has a cage of about 10
Zebra Finches. None of them looked exactly wild type to me, but some are of the same
or very similar colour form of the male photographed by some of you at JW recently, others of the older fawn varieties. The shop owner could not enlighten me a lot about the origins other than that there is selective breeding going on for dark birds and mentioned
a suggestion of a desire to get an entirely black variety. Strange really, the all white ones were around by the start of the 1970s. Just selection for weirdness I suppose. I wonder where all the variety originates from. Selection can only select from whatever
variants come up. However I still strongly suspect, because of the birds with the black markings in front of the eyes and the black slightly pointed tail, that somewhere in the mix is hybrids with the Masked Finch. It is quite possible that someone trying
to breed a particular result is releasing birds that are not in the direction he or she is hoping to achieve. They bred very easily and that may be easier than selling them or otherwise disposing of them. I reckon that is more likely than random escapes. Just
a suggestion............
Philip
From: Geoffrey Dabb [
Sent: Sunday, 26 March, 2017 8:12 AM
To:
Subject: FW: [canberrabirds] Zebra Finches
Yes Shorty. Possibly not with immediate reproductive intent. Nest-building by finches seems to be their form of conversation. g
From: shorty [
Sent: Friday, 24 March 2017 4:00 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Zebra Finches
The two charcoal birds are building a nest at the wetlands with the entrance facing East, the normal looking bird is also building a nest on it's own right next to the other but with the entrance facing West. Perhaps he is trying to coerce
the female to join him?
