Melbourne Bird Sale

03 Jul 2011, 15:38

i got a pair of tri coloured parrots and a trio of orangebreasts. i was seriously eyeing of the javan munias and then decided against it since i had:

a) already spent my allocated $200
b) they are difficult to sex and would have needed to buy at least 4 to have good odds of a pair.
c) 4 extra birds would start to tilt my aviary into overstocked land. and i don't want to do that.

nonetheless - i totally regret not buying them! i have been reading they are getting rare and despite their drab colouration i found myself oddly fond of them.

03 Jul 2011, 15:40

you know on second thought maybe its not such a bad thing. i should probably focus on breeding my parrotfinches, ruddies, orangbreasts, cubans and weavers before i take on another species.

03 Jul 2011, 17:44

I think you did the correct thing if they were the ones I saw I don't think they were pure.
Sadly someone has put some Bengalese or Spice Finch blood into them.
Their chests must be clean and white

03 Jul 2011, 18:49

Well, I probably overspent but I justified it by saying some were for my wife

2 pairs longtails split for pearl
3 pairs gouldians comprising 2 DF YB cocks, 1 SF cock , 1 YB hen and 2 WB normal hens. I might be looking to swap the hens for PB normals later on, I'm not real keen on WB normals.
5 painteds (thanks E Orix, and it was good to meet you)
Mike Fidler's book on Gouldians
plus assorted aviary clobber (boxes, feeders 'n stuff).

03 Jul 2011, 19:19

I love sales

.....good on you guys for the report

.....now

......how about a bit of a list of what was on offer

03 Jul 2011, 19:49

If you wanted green singers you were at the right sale, chaff finches, yellow siskins, plumb heads,stars, zebs, fawn saints, jacarini, emblema cock birds, red chested quail x 2 i think thats what they were, parrot finches, cubans and other finches, normal range of parrots includeing two sellers with linolateds, but again the same as last year only about half the tables taken, there just some of the birds that i was looking at, i guess I've missed a few birds but can't remember everything.

03 Jul 2011, 20:03

Whilst I couldn't find what I was after (Black & White head Nuns) I thought there were a lot of nice finches....I was particularly impressed with the quality of the St Helena's one guy had and there were 3 or 4 sellers with nice Red Checked Cordons. I was surprised with the number of uncolored Gouldians. I'm not against buying/selling uncolored birds, but there were heaps with absolutely no coloring showing...but overall whilst numbers looked light the quality of the finches was pretty good.

Nice to catch up with Andrew....I looked for a few others (eg E Orix) but didn't have any luck...maybe I'll meet more forum members at the Balarat sale.

03 Jul 2011, 20:42

it was definitely the place to be if you wanted green singers. there were lots. painteds seem to be hugely popular and people were buying them up. lots of gouldians too of course. there were many and i was surprised at the large number of grenadier weavers, jacarinis and saints.

only a few sellers had orangebreasts and they pretty much sold out.

unsurprisingly those dull seagreens far outnumbered normal red faced parrots and i noticed the few people that had normals sold them.

the chaffinch was something i had not seen before. but other than that there were no birds i would classify as "rare".

i went home happy but it wasn't as big as the two years previous.

03 Jul 2011, 21:22

Natamambo
You didn't tell the members you purchased so much you needed a trolley to get all your purchases to the car.

Also met 6 forum members, problem is they all made me feel old. Actually it is great to see so many younger people so interested in our hobby.

03 Jul 2011, 22:04

Did our camera man for the day catch up with you Eorix ?