Question?

[Tracey]

Has anyone ever heard of a female Painted and a male Longtail getting together?. They both lost their mates about the same time several months ago, and now the female Painted often preens the male Longtail . . . he will also call her if she is out of sight, they have been observed sleeping in a nest together some nights. I put a wire tube filled with dried grasses, and now they are going in together during the day too . . . the male Longtail has got very protective of her too.

[Shane Gowland]

Painted finches hooking up with the wrong species must be in vogue right now; we just had a painted/orange-breast question in another thread.

I've never seen this particular combination, and hybridization is unlikely*, so there's no real harm being done.

*Have heard of longtails hybridizing with diamond firetails, which share the "emblema" genus with painted firetails, so it is within the real of possibility.

[arthur]

Perhaps this is too simple . .

But could you buy each of them an appropriate partner

[Craig52]

I have to agree with Arthur and that longtail doesn't look very healthy so unless you try to spark him up a bit you will only need to by a cock bird painted imo.
I'm not one for condoning any hybrids among our pure Native finches

[finchbreeder]

Try very hard to find them - one or both - new mates of their own kind. It would be for the best to do this as soon as possible.
LML

[Tracey]

I am not breeder so am happy for any outcome . . . and yes the Longtail didn't look too good in that photo - we had neighbours who had feed some butcher birds so they were used to humans, the neighbours sold and moved so naturally the butcher birds saw my finches as a food source. About 4 Butcher birds constantly harassed my finches for a few weeks, this was when the male Longtail broke his beak . . . this photo was taken as the beak was growing back, it is now months later and the beak has fully grown back.
ps: the Butcher birds were encouraged to move away.

[finchbreeder]

Tracey do you have any other finches? Or just these two? And what size if their avairy? Sorry to hear the poor things were harrassed by Butcher Birds.
LML

[Tracey]

I have lots of other finches in a mixed avairy which is very big . .. there are photos in the introduce yourself section.