Purple Grenadiers

[monotwine]

You are a wealth of information. Thank you so much for sharing.

So am I then correct in saying Tappy is a Uraeginthus ianthinogaster ssp. ugandae and if ever I get the chance at a hen I should get one with whitish eye ring?

Any other hen markings that would destinguish a ssp.? I will google it too.

[MLaRue]

I will have to look at mine tonight then I know all my hens are the ones with the light powder blue around the eye but not certain of my males now

Thank you for sharing as always!

BTW - have you ever gotten any of your Grens to raise their babies or for that matter to breed without live food? Have you ever tried to not give it to them?

[MLaRue]

Wow I never tire looking at these birds!

[monotwine]

Thats GREAT work you have been doing for the domestication of the species. Well done. Its very good to hear it can be done successfully and perhaps one day they can do away with capturing birds from wild populations.

Out of curiosity is there a website or something that you get your info from. I seriously need to brush up on my ssp. etc but most non-specialist bird books don't go into detail.

[MLaRue]

It is really too bad he is in CANADA!!! Is there a way to get new blood lines from Canada to the US? I will need new bloodlines for the Violet Ears.

Also regarding the sub species - I looked in my very expensive up to date finch species book last night and they only show one species of the Grenadiers. So I'm curious as to how you find this information out too?

[JohnBoy]

In Finches and Softbill Birds by Henry Bates & Robert Busenbark, the authors mention 3 subspieces but do not describe them other than mentioning that there are slight variations. The one they describe is Ianthinogaster.

[MLaRue]

The book I have is Finches and Sparrows by Clement, Harris and Davis 1993

The one it mainly references is Uraeginthus ianthinogaster and under distribution it mentions they are local to central and southern Kenya to northern central Tanzania, it also mentions ugandae - extreme southeast Sudan southern Ethiopia, discontinuously through Somalia, northern Kenya and northern Uganda and roosevelti - highlands of central Kenya.

I honestly never paid attention to the "Distribution" part.

[Sally]

I'm just not sure about these two males, I think the one in the second picture may be Ugandae, the one in the fourth picture may be lanthinogaster. I think both hens are Ugandae. I have paired the hen in the third picture with the cock in the fourth picture. They have built a nest in a plastic plant. The picture of the hen in the nest was taken by standing on top of a stepstool from across the room. I have since added another plastic plant to the outside of the cage for privacy. I have no idea if they are sitting on eggs or not.

[Sally]

This is my second pair of Grens. The male is the one in the second photo in the previous post, and this is his mate. She does not have the dark stripe on the top of her beak, so I don't know if she is in breeding mode or not. They ignored my 'help' with the canary nests I placed in the cage for them to use as a base for their nest. Instead, they have started a nest of their own in a plastic plant. I'll just have to see where this goes. My third pair is not yet set up. The male was underweight and plucked when I got him, the hen was plucked when I got her, so I am letting them both build up their condition before I give them nesting materials.

[Sally]

Rats. So pair #1 is made up of two different subspecies--and they have already gone to nest! In fact, it seems I have three Ugandae hens and two Ugandae cocks, and one lanthinogaster cock. Should I let pair #1 continue with their possible clutch? There are so few Grens in the U.S. that I hate to lose any, yet I hate to cross the subspecies, too. And if I separate them, I would have to keep the hen by herself for at least two weeks, to make sure she wasn't carrying any sperm from the first mate.

The lanthinogaster cock in pair #1 and the Ugandae hen in pair #3 came from the same breeder as a pair, so I wonder if all his stock is mixed already?

[MLaRue]

Honestly I can't tell how you are telling the two male species apart? Neither pictures are clear enough to understand what we are or are not seeing. Both pictures have some brown on their abdomen areas so this is really confusing?

[MLaRue]

On page 10 of this thread - my two males show their abdomen's pretty well so it would seem I have two different species too?

http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php ... &start=135

[CandoAviary]

removed

[MLaRue]

I have to strongly disagree.

Breeders are not buying up just any birds but working with what we have and actually the Grens are not being imported heavily into the USA. It was not two years ago that we had no Grens available - the birds that were available were birds that were older and there were no others to compare them too. In fact no other bloodlines available at all, much like the Violet Ears.

There is no information at all about sub species on the main internet and the book I do have made it seem as a distribution of where these birds came from within their native country not distribution of species within the country so until Fardad wrote what he did - it is information not commonly known at all.

I don't think the market supports cross breeds at all - it is information we were not aware of - nothing more. I would bet all of the Grens available in the US right now are two different species AND or crossbreeds because that is what was imported together. Which this in itself is confusing. How could all our females be one species and all our males be of another?! I have never seen a female here in the US without the lighter eye area - all of them have been this color.

Blue caps and Blue breasted are two different species and are clearly visible but the Grens are not so visible or available. These birds are not cheap so it was not a OMG I have to have them on the whim buy. They are an investment into preserving the species the US has available.

[Sally]

Candace, to imply that 'breeders' haven't done their research or don't care is simply insulting. The 'breeders' that I know here in the U.S. are very concerned with conserving this species and working with the Finch Save program of NFSS. Grens are not cheap, to buy 3-4 pairs is a sizeable investment, and not something done on a whim. Of COURSE most of these 'breeders' are breeding for a hobby!! Who makes their living breeding finches these days? If it weren't for the hobby breeder, we wouldn't have half the species that are so readily available today.

And your statement that if 'they' were truly concerned with conserving and propagating the species, 'they' would have educated themselves and bought accordingly--come on! The Grens are even harder to locate than Strawberries, and when you do find some, there is often no history on them. I have recently been offered a pair of Grens and a single male Gren--both persons were honest enough to tell me the birds were old. I have heard that the recent imports of Grens went to Canada, not the U.S., so we can just hope that some of them get imported into the U.S.

And to imply that we haven't done our research is particularly galling. As Fardad said, much of the research out there has been done in other countries, with language often being the barrier. Fardad's posts about the subspecies was the first I had even heard about it. So I guess that disqualifies me as being a 'serious breeder'!

For me, the Uraeginthus species are very special. From working with the Blue-capped Cordon Bleu, the natural progression was the Purple Grenadier. Someday, I would like to work with Violet Ears, the ultimate Uraeginthus!