FINCHforum

I'm thinking that I need a new lighting system at night. I just lost a baby society to what I'm guessing was a night fright. I don't have an aviary, but a room of flight cages. Right now, I'm using rope lights, but there are still some instances, like last night, of the birds all freaking out. Anyone have any ideas?

Even though I have night lights, every once in a while I will hear a commotion in the bird room. The cats can't get in, I don't have mice (that I know of anyway), so I have no idea what causes this. There will be sounds of birds flying/fluttering, a few cheeps and calls, and then it all calms down again.

Mine all have moonlights which I installed after losing a couple birds to night frights. Since then I haven't had any issues, but sometimes when the day lights go out I hear fluttering because the finches are vying for the best roosting spots. After a minute all settles down.

I use plugin led night lights on timers, i still found that there was commotion/fluttering in bird room at night especially last year when i had alot of young canaries, one thing i learned was never enter bird room at night for any reason even if you hear fluttering, i did it twice last year out of worry for them hurting themselves and on both occasions i found a dead bird the next morning, every other occasion of hearing fluttering at night without entering birdroom there were no injuries. They settle down fairly quickly without any interference so long as they have a little bit of light to find perches again.

This year i only have 2 x cock canaries along with the foreign finches and havn't heard any commotion so far at night although it's still early in season and not that many young birds as yet.

I don't have special "moonlight" YET, but for now I put this little cheapo round LED light that you push on the light to turn it on, it takes 3 AAA batteries and the back has a sticky (which my backing is gone, not sticky anymore) but I put that on the top of their cage facing into the cage, and i cover them so that is the only light (so other things don't bother them, like the cars driving by, or street lights, also I can't fall asleep unless the TV is on, so I don't want that to bother them, so I cover them but leave them with that little (as I said "Cheap-o" light) as long as I've done that, the two times i've heard late night squawking and flying (obviously it wakes me up b/c it's in my bedroom, so it wakes me up in a PANIC!) but as long as they have those little lights so they can find their perch again, it only lasts a minute or so, and then they calm down. The one time i didn't have a light in there with them, One of my baby zebras ended up w/ a wing wound, bleeding and everything (i THINK that's how he got it, only thing I can think of) so i just use those for now until I get a better lighting set up, well All in all I need just an all around COMPLETE revamp, and the birds really should have their own room! But I don't mind sharing my room for now, until I straighten out my life a little bit... but as usual I digress....
So basically what I'm saying is you don't need anything to expensive, or want anything too too bright, just something enough so if they do have a fright they can find their way in the dark, and not hurt themself, good luck. BTW let us know what you do end up doing!

I am planning to use cheap blue LED modules as moonlights in my flight cage. They run around a dollar per module and I will use a spare power adapter to power them. These lights are bright, so I will be using a dimmer to control brightness.

Let me know if you are interested and I can help you build them for you cages.

Is there a preferred color for nighttime lights? Red, blue, white?

i keep a heat lamp on at night for my finches bright enough for them to see everything so they dont get night fright. i use to hate when they did that because someone always seemed to get injured so ever since then i keep one light on bright enough for them to still see around the aviary or flight and still be dark in their nest.

Kiishka wrote: Is there a preferred color for nighttime lights? Red, blue, white?

I have usually seen blue or white lights used as moonlight. I remember when visiting the Singapore Zoo, they used a bluish white light for the night safari.