Cool trick!

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FinchLover&Breeder
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Cool trick!

Post by FinchLover&Breeder » Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:54 am

Hey guys it's me Nick again. Today I am here to share with you an awesome trick. If you have a mobile device with YouTube then you can do this too. First off I did this to find the gender of some of my finches. What I did was I first played a female zebra finch singing recording and got the reaction I expected to get. My male zebras (both of them) and my male society sung back to the recording. Then I played a male zebra finch singing his courtship song recording and watch my finches reactions. What surprised me is all of my female zebra finches (all 4 of them) looked around for the singing male. This is just a nifty little trick to confirm gender. Hope this comes in handy and tell me what you think about this idea.

Nick
Pets:
6 zebras and counting
1 society and counting
2 hermit crabs
1 dog (Getting another soon.(will post pics))
1 outdoor cat
2 male cockatiels
(and counting)
Channel #1
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC1Otj-I0yiRjboOUxEgyreA
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isobea
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Re: Cool trick!

Post by isobea » Wed Mar 21, 2018 4:13 pm

FinchLover&Breeder - Nick, I did the exact same thing last spring when I brought home a 'pair' of lavender finches. I had put different colored plastic bands on them according to what the seller told me was the male/female. Sure enough the male responded when I played the call of a male lavender for them.
Iso

Icearstorm
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Re: Cool trick!

Post by Icearstorm » Thu Mar 22, 2018 9:13 pm

FinchLover&Breeder

I've done that before; the most dominant male sings almost immediately, while the less dominant ones sometimes take a few minutes. I also showed my gouldians a video of a gouldian courtship dance to see what they'd do. It seemed Psych preferred the male in the video over her own mate...

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FinchLover&Breeder
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Re: Cool trick!

Post by FinchLover&Breeder » Sat Mar 24, 2018 9:39 am

Icearstorm
That's kinda funny. Glad to see I'm not the only one who has discovered this cool trick.

Nick
Pets:
6 zebras and counting
1 society and counting
2 hermit crabs
1 dog (Getting another soon.(will post pics))
1 outdoor cat
2 male cockatiels
(and counting)
Channel #1
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC1Otj-I0yiRjboOUxEgyreA
Channel #2
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCQmXcLlN_Oo7hkGE4zUgS9A

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Sojourner
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Re: Cool trick!

Post by Sojourner » Mon May 07, 2018 5:04 pm

I have used this "trick" as well, but it did backfire on me the first time as I had (it turned out) a juvenile female who would "call and response" when I played a recording of a male Bengalese singing. Juvenile MALES also frequently have an incomplete song so it can make it hard to spot in some instances.

NOW I can tell the difference because of the total absence of the typical male Bengalese posturing (where they go pear-shaped) but then I didn't have that experience, and it didn't show in the video so much (probably because the bird was distracted by its owner hanging around the cage filming, which is also probably why it never really did the WHOLE song and dance which made it harder to spot the fact that the juvenile female was only doing a partial song).

So the trick tricked me! Now I know to watch for the posturing, which you can still trigger by playing the song.

But zebras are sexually dimorphic and you shouldn't need to play them a song to tell who is which gender.
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