Of course, I wasn't directing that statement towards you or any one person in particular. Just pointing out one of the major differences in keeping exotic finches versus domestic canaries. I purchased a Strawberry male from a person who kept him in a tiny cage for a year, he could only hop, not fly. When I moved him into a large cage at my home, he could not fly from one side of it to another. I had to move him back into a smaller cage, then gradually move him into larger cages. He never did fly well, it was like his muscles were atrophied from nonuse. He had a short life with me, but I like to think his last months were better, and he had other male Strawberries for company--he thoroughly enjoyed having a bath and preening his cagemates.limeslide wrote:Awesome, thanks for informing me. I have to say I do treat my canary as I would any other finch (besides the solitariness, working on that!), though, and he behaves as any other finch I've seen, but the amount of domestication does vary greatly (as much as to consider the Domestic Canary an entire sub-species) from the typical Estrilid finch.
I do agree with you in this stance, though if that paragraph was directed towards me, I have not once said that one should keep said birds alone.Sally wrote:I have Gray Singers, Serinus leucopygius, and I cringe at the thought that someone would consider them the same as Serinus canarius domesticus and place them in a small cage, all alone, so they can enjoy their singing. The same with yet another family included in this forum, the Estrildidae (or waxbills). Put a waxbill in a small cage all by itself and you have doomed that bird to a horrible life.
Yet I had a Green Singer/canary hybrid that was so aggressive that he killed any cagemates. Because of this, he was forced to live a bachelor life in his own cage. I did place his cage next to other cages, so he could communicate with and see other finches, but I wasn't about to let him kill any others.
