Our Finches Eating

We got home from work and couldn't resist checking on our finchies. Poor things thought it was dawn probably, and decided they wanted to eat! Here are a few photographs of them gobbling their bird seed!

Clockwise from right ( starting from the white one ) : Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Monica and Chandler



Rachel ( left ) and Ross ( right ) perched on top of the bowl ... the rest all busy eating!



Yum yum!

Building The Nest

Seeing birds build their nests was a first for us - in such close proximity at least. We helped them along their way by filling the nests with dried grass and twigs, and then left some extra nesting material on the floor of the cage, so that they could "finish" up their nests themselves. With Zebra Finches, the male is the one who actually builds the nest, and then follows the mating ritual of attracting the female by showing her the newly built nest. The first pair to form up was Ross and Monica. To our surprise, the nest they choose ( and managed to get! ) was the one that Rachel had staked claim to the previous day. Poor Rachel looked rather depressed, and for the next few nights insisted on sleeping on top of the nest in one corner. Joey and Phoebe paired up as well, and we then waited to Rachel and Chandler to pair up as well - but for some reason that didn't look like it was going to happen. Oh well, we thought they were slow off the mark and left nature to take it's course.

Here's a video of them building their nests and enjoying their new cage.

Our Finchies Get A New Home And Nests!

It's been exactly a week now since we got our finches, and we decided that it was now time to get them a larger home, and also nests so that they could start their families! Off we went to New Market, and bought one large 3 feet long cage, and three wicker nests which is what finches use. We got home, and set up the cage in our balcony, having to rearrange our plants to do so, and then followed the task of shifting the birdies to the new cage. We kept both the cage doors open and facing each other, and while they got rather excited, they refused to budge! After waiting a bit one tentatively hopped into the new cage, and then the next followed and after that it was easy! However what's life without a bit of excitement?! Ross ( the white one ) fell through the gap between both the cages and started flying around the room. We just about managed to get hold of him and put him inside, when Phoebe got out! By the end of it we were just relieved when we got all 6 together, and I think they didn't know what to do with all that space! Rachel chose her nest, and it was hilarious to see how she chased off any of the others who even came close!

Of course needless to say the rest of the evening saw us sitting in front of their cage, and looking at them cheeping and chirping away happily and hopping in and out of their new nests in a state of high excitement! Finally darkness descended, and as it did, our little feathered friends also settled down for the night.

Our Zebra Finches Chirping!

Here's a video I took of our babies in their old cage. Noisy lot aren't they?!

Finchity Finches - Welcome To Your New Home!

I've made half hearted attempts to start a blog earlier, but never managed to do so. This time however I'm going to try as I have good reason to! A friend of mine suggested that I document the story of our new Zebra Finches - so here's hoping I manage to do that!

Being a pet lover I've been desperate to keep pets at home, and dogs and cats having been ruled out, the choice was narrowed down to fish or birds - both of which didn't really appeal to me too much at the time. Things changed though, when about a month ago I stepped out of my house and found that my neighbours had bought a pair of Zebra Finches. I'd never seen them before and they're such darling adorable lil things that it just clinched the deal for me. I asked the neighbour's daughter where she got them from and she gave me rather vague directions to a place pretty close to our house. In fact she didn't seem too sure of the exact location or area!

I waited for the weekend to come, and then decided to set out to find the pet shop. It took some searching but we finally found it and discovered that the guy kept both fish and birds; and he still had about 15 odd Zebra Finches left. I’d set out with the intention of just going to have a look, but the sight of all those finches was irresistible! To cut a long story short, we finally walked out of there about thirty minutes later – proud owners of six little finchies!

We decided to name them after the characters in “Friends” – meet Monica, Rachael, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler and Ross!!

Left to Right : Monica, Chandler and Rachel



Having a bath!



Eating their egg food - basically egg white and finely ground egg shell



All six of them



Egg food!