JON'S JOURNAL: Fun with Finches

Last Sunday, Corinna, my nephew Ross, Prudence and I went to the monthly bird sale at Northam. I was vaguely looking for a parakeet so, of course, I came back with a pair of Bengalese finches. These are particularly interesting birds because they are not actually a species; they are a long-standing domesticated complex introgressive hybrid of several small southeast Asian seedeaters, including - I suspect – several of the munia tribe. There is actually a mystery here, because as far as I know, no-one has ever investigated the actual antecedence of these pretty little birds, despite the fact that they have been domesticated as caged birds for many centuries.

I bought them because they are pretty, because the two aviaries at the bottom of the garden have been empty for over two years since Jerry the jackdaw died in the unseasonably bitter snows of March 2010, and I bought them because – since I was a little boy – I have always liked the sound of oriental finches. Anyway, they were only a fiver for the pair, and I decided to bite the bullet and enter the wonderful world of finch ownership post haste.

The first night we had them it rained, and sadly the food dish that we had put on the ground was full of water. Graham came up with the idea of putting a glass fish tank on its side on one of the perching shelves so that the birds could both shelter and feed. I was dubious. I thought it would be too complicated a concept for such little brains to handle. But I was wrong, much to my pleasure. As you can see from these trigger camera photographs, it didn’t take long for the little fellows to figure it all out.

Clever birdies!