European goldfinch experts?

[andiok]

You know, I never found goldfinches to be delicate birds, neither in Germany (in an indoor aviary)nor here where I have kept them since 1986 in my outside aviary.

well Iso, have bred them for about my whole life and my father was breeding them way before i was born and trust me they are very delicate birds.
meaning you change their diet (say cant find anymore the mix you feed them) and you will see changes in their health. You feed them more green or fruit then you normally wood and they will get affected.
You accidentally doped the broom on their cage while cleaning, boom one of them gets stressed out and sick.
Say it rains heavily for a month (if you have them outdoors) and the humidity raises quick, ohh you will have many youngs affected from coccidiossis.
This is what i mean with delicate and if you compare them to other finches i dont think it would be the same. I have bred other european finches and none of the other species would be this delicate.
BUT if you take good care of them especially with their diet and leave them alone do their thing, you wont have major issues.

To be honest i have never kept them in an aviary. Only large breeding cages for pairs and smaller cages for song goldfinches but i have had friends keeping them in aviaries with the same type of issues.
Anyways i wish you the best of luck with them. And consider yourself lucky to be able to have them. Its been my 6th year in Canada and i still havent found a pair of goldfinches

take care

[isobea]

andiok - Just getting around to replying to your last post.
All of my birds are outside in the aviary (16 feet long, 7 feet high, 5 feet deep) and I do leave them alone as much as possible, disturb them as little as possible. I have mostly natural branches for them and a few live plants. Also I have only 12 birds altogether, so there is plenty of room for them to fly and exercise. Young ones get sold to friends from the bird club once they are independent and have gone through their molt.
Only a few days every year are stressful for the goldfinches - when the hot Santa Ana winds come in. They seem to tolerate colder temperatures much better than the extreme heat.
Iso

[andiok]

isobea
thats a great aviary and space you have build for your little guys and yourself.
NONrelated: i love your schwarzkopf

Some suggestions (i cant really tell well from the pic)
Try to add some rigid foam on the ceiling and the walls where the sun hits more the aviary
Try to do a double door entry so the little guys have no way to escape.
If you can add some flower pots and plant their seeds in there. would be great natural way to feed greens. One thing though, cover the dirt of the pots with fine gravel or sand. Dirt always contains some sort of germs that the goldfinch are sensible to.

In another note, i still insist that if you want to breed them with no issues you need to divide them from other birds and keep individual pairs. This is if you are really looking to grow the population of goldfinches.
this is one the best examples of outdoor breeding aviary. Note the individual rooms for single pairs.

[isobea]

andiok - Even though we usually get no more than 6 or 7 days (not consecutive) of Santa Ana conditions per year, I like the idea of adding rigid foam for insulation. I'll have to look into that.
As for adding a double entry door: my entry door is barely 4 feet tall and at one end of the aviary. So as soon as I get close and open it, my birds fly over to the far end. Since 1989, when I built this aviary, not a single bird has escaped. But I know that most people prefer double doors, especially if they keep large numbers of birds.
I've always just kept one pair of goldfinches but if need be I can divide my aviary. I'll attach a picture that shows some of the inside. There is a partial divider and I made an extra door that I can hang to close the gap. It doesn't show some of my potted plants, though (I rotate my plants to give them a chance to grow back).
Love hearing your ideas and getting your input.
Iso

[GouldianGuy]

Never ordered from them, but they are in Ontario

http://www.exoticwings.com/info/caged-b ... finch.html

[gostokom]

Hi

It therefore appears difficult for them to establish a hierarchy if they are not all from the same birds familly, must be very strestfull for them

nive aviary anyway

[gostokom]

I use this to excite them to sing, hop it's help


http://vocaroo.com/media_command.php?me ... wnload_mp3

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1OpVrFOumQX

[andiok]

iso
another alternative would be some Shade Cloth (even though wont be as good as rigid foam)
you install it on the roof so it always makes shade over the aviary.
Would be great to have some extra for the front, when the sun hits it.

a cheap fountain water pump and some sort of pots or birth bath is great too for aviaries like yours.
check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeA8g-9jHSo

Andi

[isobea]

andiok - Hi Andi, it seems we have some of the same ideas. The left fourth of my aviary has a solid wooden roof, the next two fourths have green (opaque) fiberglass covering the roof and only the very right fourth has clear fiberglass on top. So there is some solid shade and some filtered light. Also, I have attached fruit tree netting along the rain gutter and angled it out away from the aviary for about 5 to 6 feet (this makes it impossible for the hawks to get close enough to attack my birds). When the hot Santa Ana winds arrive, I spread shade cloth on top of the fruit tree netting which creates a buffer zone.
I do like the fountain they created in the video you attached but it would be hard to clean on a daily basis if it was inside the aviary. Years ago I bought a glazed 14 inch terra cotta saucer and it has served me well as a birdbath. It's big enough and easy to clean.
Iso

PS: my female doesn't spend as much time poking around in her feathers anymore and is getting more active by the day.

[isobea]

Sad update: my female had improved so much (eating, drinking, bathing, flying and climbing around in the branches, following her male - and he following her) I thought she had a good chance. But suddenly, on Saturday, she didn't look quite right. On Sunday she was somewhat puffy but still eating and drinking and then, this morning, I found her dead on the floor.
I guess sometimes there is only so much you can do for a bird that has been kept in a small cage with the wrong food for over a year. At least she came out of that catatonic stage, we got rid of the air sack mites, and she had plenty of room to fly for the last 3 months, a mate and her favorite wild foods.
Still sad,
Iso

[lovezebs]

isobea

I'm so sorry about your birdie Iso... What a shame really, just when things were starting to turn around for her, poor little girl.

Sometimes we just don't know what goes wrong with them, and no matter how hard we try, it just doesn't work. If only they could talk and tell us.

There is a pair of Australian Golds here at my Pet Shop, but they are expensive, and I still don't know the difference between the Europeans and the Australians, shrug.

Do take care Iso, and I hope you'll find another girl for your boy somewhere down the line.

[andiok]

isobea
oh sorry to hear this iso.
hopefully you'll be able to find another girl for the male soon.

[isobea]

lovezebs and andiok - Thanks for your responses. The male seems to miss her quite a bit. He's singing up a storm. But I will take my time to find a new mate for him because this time I want to make sure she is captive-bred. The male I have is an import and still very wild, panicking and flying around wildly every time I get too close (about 6 feet seems to be the closest he can tolerate). He certainly needs a calmer female who would be able to settle down on a nest, brood consistently and feed her babies dependably.
Elana, I'm not sure but I believe he was imported from Australia. His song is quite different from the goldfinches I kept in the past. Their song was very much the same as the one of the wild birds I heard growing up in Germany and later on in Greece and Italy. Just like you I don't know what the differences are between the European and Australian ones. As far as I know the European ones were the ancestors of the Australian populations.
Iso

[andiok]

isobea
Australian Goldfiches are The European Goldfinch
They were introduced into Australia in the 1850s and 1860s with releases in Melbourne first in 1863, in Adelaide in 1879, Sydney before 1886 and around Hobart in the early 1880s

I have breed 4 subspecies of European goldfinches.And from the caracteristics of the australian goldfinches look and song i would bet that they are parva.

Carduelis carduelis tschussi (you find them more in north Albania and south Italy) very small, dull in colors and BEAUTIFUL song.Very metalic and melancholic sounds. One of a kind, you wont hear the same sounds in other subspecies. This is my favorite subspecies.

Carduelis carduelis parva (Spain and Maroko mostly) Nice colors (not great though) and beautiful song but way more louder and strong sounds then tschusii. My second favorite because they are great singers, meaning they dont stop singing all day, literally...

Carduelis carduelis balkanica (Albania,Serbia,Check etc) Beautiful colors (almost as Carduelis c. Major) with huge red masks and very intense yellow. Melamine shows intensely black and dark brown on them BUT the song is not my favorite. They're sounds are not the greatest.
Carduelis carduelis britanica (Uk mostly) same as C.c. balkanica but a bit duller on the look.

NOW, if you ask me....
The way you get your male to calm down and get used to the captive live, is like i have told you in my other posts. You need to put him on a cage with only the front open. At least 4 feet long.
Give him a nice green melanin canary female and you'll have some beautiful looking and great singer hybrids. Teach them a decent goldfinch song (I can provide you with a fantastic natural song) and you'll have a goldfinch machine song.
When you find a female goldfinch for him, he will know what he wants from her....