My Cordon Bleu Fledgelings

[w.l.]

MariusStegmann

Buffalo worms and ant puppae

@Derk

Being in a tropical "developing" country, insects around are certainly a fact of life here. My birds live in the same house as me, but up on the 2nd floor. If they eat the mini creatures in the sand, all the better! They certainly spend time foraging on the ground and pecking at things, but I can't see what if anything they actually find to eat there.

[Derk]

w.l.
I have often wondered if I would enjoy living in a setting like where you are. Unfortunately, it seems like those unsettled areas often have volcanoes, earthquakes, or a lot of unrest. We Canadians are quite spoiled, rarely having to deal with tragedy and upset. Just the odd riot after losing the Stanley Cup.

[MariusStegmann]

Derk That is a strange comment, I bet that Indonesia is much more populated than Canada. Unsettled by Europeans, yes.

[Derk]

MariusStegmann
Perhaps 'unsettled' was a poor choice of words and I should have re-used 'developing.' What I meant was I like the idea of not everyone having cars; asphalt and concrete isn't found everywhere; lots of farming and ranching, people walk, families often have a different closeness than what is found in North America. I have friends from the Philippines and I have heard much of the different lifestyle. Many aspects of that type of life appeals to me. A lot of my friends are so scheduled that it gets almost impossible to visit with the entire family at once. A parent is almost always taxiing a child somewhere. 'Unsettled' referred to not completed/planned/finished not unsettled as no Europeans. My comment had nothing to do with race.

[MariusStegmann]

Derk No problem, I thought that you meant it as sparsely populated. I don't think that there is a lot of unrest etc in Indonesia. I live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Beautiful nature, wild-live and plant-live, also no natural disasters, like hurricanes, earth quakes, twisters and extreme temps or storms etc. For instance just in a small area like the top of table mountain, you get more than 4000 plant-species alone. But I live in a country where violence is a hourly occurrence, but we have infra-structure like roads, dams, bridges etc. Corrupt government officials and leaders are the norm, political riots are the order of the day. Sometimes, there are riots about crime!

[w.l.]

Derk
I didn't want to go off topic but it has bern done already so my comments:
Thanks God not everyone has cars here! How much extra pollution that would mean by the World's 4th most populous nation. Yet, fewer people walk than in the West, they prefer riding motorbikes even to their farms. Unrest and natural disasters may make interesting news headlines, but in reality in a country of 17 thousand islands, these always seem to happen elsewhere, and if it wasn't for the news, I would hardly ever even know of any. Unlike in many western countries, let alone South Africa, the streets are safe to walk even in the biggest cities at night, even for an obvious foreigner like myself.
The volcanoes actually make for great scenery and fertile soil supporting lush vegetation and some of the highest biodiversity on Earth, including a hopping 1600+ species of birds, 382 of them endemics found nowhere else. In the bustling bird markets here, I can buy birds folks in Western countries can only dream of for a pittance.
My main pain may well be the humid tropical heat, particularly unpleasant in cities, but I still much prefer it to winters in my Central European homeland, let alone Canada!

[MariusStegmann]

w.l. Can you buy CB's also for a pittance or only local birds? I believe yours are the ones endemic to South Africa. The Blue Waxbill? Native name "Blou Sysie"

[w.l.]

MariusStegmann
My cordons are the common but charming red-cheeked ones from West Africa.
They cost me ca $35 for a pair, obviously more than most local species.
So far, imports of finches I could buy only came from West and East Africa, though there is a distant hope of southern African species arriving one day from/via Mozambique. These may actually include some South African species.
I love African waxbills (while I find the African serins sold here in huge numbers as songbirds utterly boring) so imports from that continent are of high interest to me, but really, if I could only buy the species native to Indonesia, I could not complain either.

[Derk]

MariusStegmann@w.l.
One of the local bird importers told me some of the more common finches he gets from African cost him pennies. It is the shipping and of course a fairly healthy mark up that we are paying for.

I have blue capped and red-cheeked cordons. A few pet stores have started to sell them. They charge $120-150 EACH. Through breeders/importers a pair is about $100-120.


w.l. - I am not sure how many people realize how diverse the climate is here in Canada. Absolutely, there are places that are bitterly cold during the winter and others that are thick with humidity during the summer. But there are also areas of moderate temperatures as well. Where I live in British Columbia, the south west coast, a rose bush planted near the house, rarely dies off, and has been known to flower in January.

Unfortunately, weather can quickly change. Cold rain and freezing ice/hail is sometimes a concern in the winter. It is the main reason having finches in an outdoor aviary can be a concern.