FINCHforum

At the suggestion of @ delray, I am asking if any of you can help identify the sex of my Heck's Shaft-tail? When I bought them, the lady at the bird store didn't even know what kind of finch it was, but thought that it was a girl because the other birds had pulled the feathers out of the back of its head. They grew back really quickly after we got home, thankfully. With a little online searching, I know that it's a Heck's. I have no idea, however, whether we have a girl or a boy. Any thoughts you can share would be greatly appreciated.

Happy weekend!

cindy might be able to help. I'm terrible at visually sexing mine. I just band them with different colors and when I hear one sing I note the color and know it's a boy.

Thanks, Colt. I read that shafts often don't sing, is that right? This one only makes a sound like my dog's squeaky toy. Though it rarely makes noise at all.

I use to have shaft tails and I was told the male had a more reddish beak and the females was reddish orange. Also the male usually has a bigger bib that the female. The males do sing a song. Yours looks like a female by the bib but in the pics it looks like it had a really red beak. You will def know when you hear it sing.

Male Shaft-tails certainly sing. You might try playing a youtube video of a male singing to see if your bird responds. Visually sexing them can be done by the bib (I've never heard of the beak color, all my birds look identical). Generally hens have a smaller bib while a male's bib is larger and shaped more like a triangle. In my opinion that can change from photo to photo depending on how they are sitting. So I find it unreliable.

male is on the left hen right.... see the difference in the bib, hens have bibs that look like tear drops, rounded edges smaller than males. Males have a wider triangle shape, broader at the base. If startled or scared a hen can make the throat puff out and she can be mistakenly ID'd as male
male
top to bottom female, female, male

you can not sex shaft tails by beak color... beak color is mutation linked... you can have red beaks, orange beaks, yellow beaks, even pink beaks and either sex can have these...so no red beaks do not denote males

see my lower picture, the male is orange beaked. Hens can have red beaks

Shaft tails do sing, males have a very strong song

scroll down to find the sound clip of the song
http://www.finchinfo.com/birds/finches/ ... sfinch.php

I am not clear on what picture belongs to what bird.... A picture looking straight at the front of the bird is best to try to ID with... take a few pictures and do one bird at a time and label it.

notice the males beak (male on the right) it is lighter than the hen next to it....male is orange beak

the hen second from the left is red beaked
the male in the very center and the male on the far right are pink beaked male on left hen right.. both red beak

cindy she only has the one Shaft-tail. So if you've ID'd it as a male all the pics are the same male bird. ;)

Thank you, Colt and cindy!

So Cindy, I have no idea how old the Latte is. I've had him less than a month. Is it possible he just doesn't sing yet, but will?

He's in his adult plumage so should be singing. Mine don't do it really often. There's usually a chattering call they have and the little hawk noise. But you'll catch them singing every so often. I played a recording for my juveniles who had just molted into their adult plumage and they began singing fairly quickly.

I do hope he sings. I listened to the recording and the Heck's song is beautiful. My society boys have a sweet song and they LOVE to sing!