Hey
MiaCarter I was wondering when you'd pop in.
I am really hoping to breed them. Of course then I have to find another unrelated pair or two in order to offer unrelated offspring.
The breeder I purchased them from has had them for a couple of years and they were wild-caught imports so it is possible they've aged out. But I'm really hoping not. She had them housed in a flight that was probably 8-10 feet tall (it didn't sit on the floor so a bit hard to judge) maybe 2 feet deep and 4-5 feet wide. They were housed with several species of Tanagers, Dacnis, Honeycreepers, Waxbills, Mannikins, and Seedeaters. She never really gave them an opportunity to breed with that many birds. And they were never given an appropriate nesting site. She took amazing care of them though so once I get the male through his molt, or get the feathers grown back from the Honeycreeper picking on him (whichever is the case) I'll be conditioning them into breeding.
I've ordered a lot of different softbill diets in order to try to meet any and all dietary needs.
MiaCarter do you know if Starlings can suffer from Iron Storage like Toucans? I haven't found anything in the limited data I have found on Amethysts but perhaps I should Google care of European Starlings. I've also ordered two new nestboxes and am thinking about ordering another style to see if they prefer one over the other.
I've ordered some live food as well which I know they don't necessarily require but would be nice if they learned to eat from my hand. Just so they can associate me with yummy treats instead of panicking and flying across the flight each time I move. I should probably just sit out there with them for a while each day so they learn. I think they were more comfortable at Su's because they were literally feet above our heads and payed us no mind. Although they certainly didn't mind her terribly lazy cat that lives in the birdroom. He lays on top of that cage (it his favorite) but frequents all the others too. The birds pay him no mind and even pull his long hair for nesting material. lol But if I walk out there they just panic. Of course it doesn't help I've had to move a lot and net them recently so they are all a bit more flighty than usual.
I would definitely say they are smarter than the average bird. They were very observant on the ride home and surprisingly calm for that matter in the smaller cage. They might not even bother jumping off the perch when I had to pick it up. The hen is much braver than the male in that respect. But it was fun watching them take in their surroundings, peering intently at the finches in the cage next to them as well as eyeballing things in the car. They seemed to look at everything, not just me like the finches do.
Their intelligence is what makes me think it would be fun to have them accept food from my hand. I don't expect them to just sit their as I reach around them like the Bourkes do, but it would be nice if I didn't see a purple bullet shoot across to each side of the flight to get away from me. And I can have my back to the flight and be on the other side of the room and they'll still do it.
I also found some reading online in regards to hand-raising the babies. Apparently the parent-raised birds can tame down relatively well, accepting food and generally being less nervous around you, but hand-raised individuals are very friendly and accepting of humans and can make fun birds to take to schools, etc to teach children about birds.
So maybe if I get babies I can work on that, but for now I'm just making sure all the parents needs are met. And if it comes down to them being absolutely miserable in the indoor flight I may cave and build a walk-in flight outdoors (a no-no as I'm renting) but maybe they'd enjoy that more. They are certainly going to have a plethora of food to choose from by the end of the week when all this food comes in.
And I'll see if I can get some decent pictures of them tomorrow. I need to clean cages and the birdroom in general so I'm hoping once I get all that done I can sit down on the ladder and just play on my phone or something and let them get used to me. I might even open the door to the cage and let the male Bourke tool around the birdroom. He likes to sit on the door and watch me and then get in the floor and clean up seeds. He's a little mess.