Cutest Finch Sound Ever!

[MiaCarter]

Squeepers just discovered a crazy new sound and it's the cutest thing ever!

She does this crazy sound whenever I talk to her or call her name.
Here's a video:
http://youtu.be/egM__BmSbXk

It's soft and a bit hard to hear, so you'll need to turn the volume up.

She's the little white bird standing on top of the nest.

It's actually sounds like a variant of a male mating song, so I'm starting to wonder if Squeepers could be a boy!

[CommaHolly]

omgosh, that's too cute,,,,,,,,

ahem, if you wake up in the night and your sliding glass door is open, your alarm is squeeling and squeepers is missing,,,,,,,,


I know nothing

[Sheather]

It sounds a LOT to me like a young male learning how to sing.

[Corkysgirl]

So cute! It does sound like a male. Were you hoping for a male?

[MiaCarter]

It sounds a LOT to me like a young male learning how to sing.

Yes! It does, doesn't it!
It's definitely not like any female sound I've ever heard! (In fact, that would be more a LOT more singing than I've ever seen a female zebra do!)

@Corkysgirl --- I had no real hopes with Squeepers in terms of gender.
I thought she was a boy at first, as all baby chicks look male to me.

Then, her feathers started coming in and everyone --- including myself --- thought she was likely a girl with such light coloring.

So I guess we'll find out!
I currently have a female without a friend (Jackson's rejected potential new mate), so male or female would work.

Now I'm super curious!

Squeepers bio mom was White CFW, dad is a normal pied. So my guess would be a heavily pied male or a white CFW female like mom.
Could that parent combo result in a male that looks like the males at the top of the page on the e-finch description?:
http://www.efinch.com/species/cfwzeb.htm

[Corkysgirl]

I was just looking at that page the other day because that's what mine should look like with the parents of my chicks. I suppose they could. I'm no expert. I have such an array of colors. The golden one...who really looks like there is a more orange patch on his cheeks today....the charcoal colored one with the cream belly with cream going up under his neck. He looks just like a junco bird except the cream goes all the way up his neck...unlike a junco. (I suspect he is the other females offspring. Remember two females one male, one nest...mated same time). Then there is the black and while....Dalmatian looking one. It has white spots on his/her head and black and white throughout. I have no IDEA where any of them came from!

[MiaCarter]

Well, it's certain. Squeepers IS a BOY!

I had him out and I was looking closely and noticed he's got 2 new feathers -- those reddish feathers on the sides with the white spots!
Those are BOY feathers! No girl has those.

He's got the faint beginnings of a chest bar too.
So SHE is a HE! (I started calling him a He, then the white feathers made me think female, but he threw me! Now I'm dying to see what he looks like as an adult!!)
And I can't wait to hear more of that adorable singing!

[Corkysgirl]

He does sing nicely. Can't wait to see him...all grown up!

[Nerien]

Definitely a male learning his song, they start out sounding like old machinery that needs oil.

If mom is a CFW, then Dad, tho he looks grey & pied, is split to CFW. means he's carrying the CFW gene, but also has the normal grey gene, which is dominant to CFW (covers it up) so what you see is grey. (Pied is a separate gene which adds white marks to whatever color the bird is.) With that combo of parents, you have a 50% chance of babies being either grey or CFW, for both males and females. The pied may or may not show up in babies, hard to detect on a CFW unless it happens to hit the parts of the bird that have orange or black.

[MiaCarter]

Nerien -- Thank you, thank you, thank you for this!!

A white CFW female and a normal grey pied is also the combo of a couple I'm trying to breed and I've been dying to know what my chances are of getting each appearance.

So if you had to guess by his appearance right now, would you think Squeepers would be a CFW or a normal grey?

He's white with grey on his head. That grey is starting to get a bit darker and expand (e.g. it's expanding to form a faint chest bar).

If it's any help, my avatar picture to the left is Squeepers as a baby. So you can see he has pink skin, with slightly darker on the head and top of the torso.

It's funny that you said they sound like old machinery that needs oil, as that was my impression! At times, he sounds like creeky hinges or something similar!

[Nerien]

Squeepers looks CFW. The grey on his head should whiten up when he molts into adult feathers. He should get the black tears, orange cheeks, orange flanks, and black breast bar, and light tail bars.

CFW is sex-linked recessive. Recessive means it is covered up by dominant colors, like grey (NG-for normal grey). Sex linked means it's carried on the sex chromosomes, in people that's the XX (female) or XY (male). In birds, the female is the heterogametic sex, which means she has the two different chromosomes, which are called ZW instead of XY, and the male is the homogametic sex, ZZ, instead of XX.

The NG or CFW color gene is on the Z chromosome. Since a female bird has only one Z, whatever gene she has shows up, and she passes that on to her male offspring. Her female offspring would get the W chromosome, which is what makes them female, so they don't get their color gene from mom, only dad, who passes them one of his Z's. Male offspring get a Z from mom and a Z from dad. So, depending on what genes pass from mom & dad, their coloring is determined by dominant genes or, if they get both Z's with the recessive gene, then that shows up.

Your male has to be "split" for CFW, since Squeepers is CFW, and so must have mom's CFW and dad's CFW in order for that color to show. Dad looks NG because he also has an NG gene, and that dominates. Not all NG zebra males are split to CFW, only if they had a parent who carried the gene and passed it on to them. If you don't know the parentage of an NG male, one way to test it is to breed to a CFW and see what the offspring come out as. From this cross, male offspring have a 50/50 chance of looking NG, but being split for CFW since that's the gene mom gives him plus dad's NG, or of being CFW from mom's CFW gene plus dad's CFW gene. Female offspring get their coloring from dad, so they have a 50/50 chance of being either NG or CFW, depending on which of his genes they get.

Other colorings or modifiers, like pied, change things depending on whether they are sex-linked genes or not (autosomal genes), dominant, codominant, incomplete dominant, or recessive. Some interfere with each other, others just add on, others influence & change all kinds of things. But NG vs CFW is an easy one.

[Nerien]

Look familiar?


Dad pied NG, Mom CFW, fledgling male CFW


Dad, Mom, fledgling female CFW


Brother and Sister, coloring up


Brother, mom, sister in back

[MiaCarter]

Nerien --- Oh that's funny!
It looks VERY familiar!!

It's funny how in the first 2 pics, the male and female look exactly the same when they're younger with the black beaks!

Squeepers just started growing the banded CFW tail feathers. They're about 3/4 inch long and they have the tan stripes like regular CFW, not the grey stripes like continental.
His mom passed away, and I don't have good photos of her tail feathers, so I wasn't sure which one she had! The foster mom has the same, so I think we should have similar odds with Molly Sue and Ivy!

A couple more of those spotted reddish feathers on the sides today and if you look at his cheeks from the right angle, you can see a faint reddishness.
If I had to guess, I'd say Squeepers will look like the male in the foreground of the fourth photo in a week or two! His beak is coloring up fast.

It's funny that the super flirty male in this cage still treats Squeepers like a girl. He sings to him and preens him (better than trying to beat him up or chase him off, I suppose!) But then again, Elvis sings to and flirts with me, so I guess he's not that picky! LOL

[Corkysgirl]

MiaCarter They're so beautiful! My mom and yours looks just alike except mine's tail stripes are much more muted. They could be sisters. So cool! I love the lighter colored birds. I have mostly the darker zebras and then angel came along and changed up the Nerien I love your explanation of genetics and really want to learn about it more and more. I don't know exactly what my juvenile's father is and don't know what to think of the babies that are very different from each other. I have really poor picture quality. The pictures don't show true colors as it's a tiny nanny cam video...then a still made from it. The black/white bird is truly charcoal white, not brown as it seems in this picture...though I don't know if he will change. The chick with the dark back, cream all the way up her neck may be from another mother because two females mated with him and had eggs in the same nest. I also say this because the CFW has very dark skin and two of the chicks had that, one didn't What do you think of the variations genetically?

[MiaCarter]

Well, Sir Squeepers learned his song!

This video cracks. me. up. Look how he stretches like he's warming up to perform! So cute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pquY78vsWDQ