Its all A MYTH.

[BluJay]

How many Ornithologist are on this forum? And/or operate this forum? If any, how many have practical experience verses text book bull$4!7?

[TomDeGraaff]

I found my new bought Crimson male SCALPED and dead. I only ever once saw him have a beak to beak with a Song Sparrow on the second day in the aviary when he landed on the Sparrows nest. Apart from that he has been examplary. The aviary is full of Redface, Gouldians, diamonds and other odds and sods.

Forgetting the stuff about the species' "attitude", do you have a suspect, Guy? Could it be a non-bird matter like a night fright/ mouse attack or similar? I would think it worth searching for the culprit before putting a new bird in the aviary to possibly face the same fate...
Chhers
Tom

[finchbreeder]

Not an expert either. And almost started to believe that one of the "myths" was a myth. I had had a number of Cubans over the years. All lovabale and trustworthy in mixed avairys. lulled me into disbelieving that they were aggressive to anything but other Cubans. Big mistake. The latest boy is also lovable, but not trustworthy. Had to relocate the Orange breasteds to a safe avairy. So maybe it's a myth, but play safe always and just watch a little more than you would with birds that dont have this reputation. And i wish you lovable and trustworthy birds always.
LML

[Spitfire]

It is not that we do not have any experts on this forum and we do have a lot of people with plenty of experience, BUT unfortunately what works for them with their years of experience
DOES NOT work for me with 5 months experience in keeping the beautiful Crimson Finch. There are so many variables when keeping finches that giving just the negatives about
a species is disconcerting even to me who has kept Finches for 40 years. Maybe these other experienced persons have only kept the Crimson with maybe Orange Breast, Firefinches,
Stars and other small insignificent birds that do not hurt a fly and Maybe the Crimson is nasty towards them, but again not in my 14 metre long aviary.
Maybe the Song Sparrows done the deed and other persons never had Sparrows with their Crimsons, again I cannot be sure, I was not there. What about the Jacarini could he be the culprit, he's always willing to snap at the Sparrows. Chaffinches I don't have so I will discount them, although the way the poor bird was scalped it had the hallmark of a chaffinch.
I did cosider the possibility of a cat attack, but right above where the bird lay there was no blood and no feathers, and I did once see a cat attack a Skylark and with one swift strike snapped the poor birds head off. This bird had all his head feathers missing and blood on top of his head but the head was intact.

So as you can see, it's all congecture, what works in 1 aviary and in 1 backyard does not necessarily going to work for everyone. Thats why we love the hobby because every day is a challenge
1 day a you loose a Crimson and the next you see 4 Stars , 2 tri colours and 4 canary babies being fed. ENJOY.

[Nye]

I had a red cheeked cordon that hated longtails and killed 3 before i found out it was he who did the deed. Bird keeping can be a little like being a policeman, you have to be on the lookout for that trouble maker and you have to investigate every death that occurs in your aviary.LOL