FINCHforum

I am familiar with the purple breasted Gouldian. From what I understand, there is also a lighter shade (perhaps called lavender?) that exists. My question is how do you tell a male (lavender) from a female purple breast? Or are the differences more pronounced than I'm imagining? And then there's the whole dilute thing.

aphily8ed

Males should have pale beaks with a red or yellow tip, while females usually have somewhat grey beaks. Males have a richer shade of yellow and bright blue that extends down most of the neck, while females are overall duller.

Males and females all have different calls, though it's kind of hard to describe. Males make more of a high-pitched "shreeee" or "shreep!" noise and a soft nesting call, while females have a lower-pitched call and hiss that tends to sound slightly louder.

aphily8ed

The lavender breast male: will of course sing, will have less black around the face. In a greenback there is a much pronoused blue behind the head then the female.

A female has color about 50% in the beak, a male had a slight lipstick kiss.


The Blueback back are harder as they have no lipsick in the beak. A male lavender BB looks identical to a female purplebreast.

This baby is still very young. Just wondering if anyone else has come up with a pure white, colorless Gould like this. It might develop a little color later on but it looks like it's an albino at the moment. The only other pure white finches in my aviary are some Florida Fancy Zebras but I didn't think Goulds can cross with Zebs. The hen is a blue back.

It looks like it might be a silver, but either way, it is a very pretty bird.

Could be. Today I noticed the yellow back male feeding this baby and two more that do have some rather pale coloring.

With a few exceptions, the silvers I researched on-line mostly have a
gray-ish or silver looking head. We'll see how this one feathers out in a few months. Do silvers have any value?

I believe they are very expensive and hard to find at bird marts. Quite rare.

Here's the pair doing a great job feeding their babies by the window. Looks like they might have produced 2 silvers and another YB.

I have a lavender breasted male. They are brighter colored in all the same ways as normal purple breasted males, except the chest is lighter. Belly is still very bright yellow, blue ring around head is still very much there. It would be hard to confuse him with a hen. Attached are a couple pics of him. He is just starting to molt, so head is not as red as normal.