Aussie Finch Forum

Tiaris wrote:You can get it in many other finches too (most species I reckon). Bluecaps are a very obvious one where the frosted & non-frosted birds are like chalk & cheese & where both are required for concurrent size maintenance & colour enhancement. Singers, Cubans, Siskins, Cordons, etc, etc.

I agree with bluecaps Tiaris,but i also believe the feathering in cock blue caps changes over time,with age. The older the cock bird gets the harder the feathers get and also the blue becomes a few shades darker. It is probably a sure sign that a darker blue bird is an older bird. Craig

That may occur to some extent with age, but even when first coloured up the differences are still obvious between different birds (even siblings).

I am still a bit confused about this buff/yellow distinction.
Are we talking about all the birds feathers, or only some that show these differences ?
Can you see the difference only if you pluck off a feather, and if so which are the best feathers to pluck ?
A photo would be great, for the slow witted like myself

I am still not sure what this has to do with size, or is it just the apparent size as the feathers lie less flat and so the bird appears bigger.

I find most (but not all) of my yellow-billed black-headeds tend to be buff feathered whereas most (but not all) of my red-billed black-headeds tend to be yellow feathered

Is this by design, so as to allow the buff to yellow matings, or do the buff feathered yellow billed birds look better and vice versa for the red billed birds.
I guess a third option is some short of linkage between the buff feather and yellow head gene.

Cheers
Brett

I don't pluck them but a buff feather has longer filaments with the outer edge of each filament lacking pigment so it appears on the bird as less intense colour & very close observation reveals slightly frosted pigment. Buff feathered birds (because of the larger feather) tend to appear fuller shaped (bigger) and generally the bigger birds in each group will mostly be buff-feathered. The buff feather is a completely different shape to an intense feather with a more rounded shape compared to the thinner intense feather. Some bird websites (perhaps canary ones) may have close-up feather photos to show a detailed comparison of both feather types.
The fact that many of my buff birds are yellow-beaked BHs does come from the yellow-headed gene (in my opinion) & is largely the reason why most yellow-headed birds lack the colour intensity of most black-headed birds (again my opinion). My red-billied BHs' tendency to be "yellow" feathered (showing greater colour intensity and clearer colour definition) is further evidence of this IMO.
Most times I make the yellow-billed to red-billed BH pairings, the yellow-billed bird has better size/shape features & the red-billed bird has better colour features. This is a broad generalisation & is not always the case, but is quite consistent in my Gouldians and using this mating very regularly over the last 10 years with my current Gouldian stud has resulted in significant improvement with my birds for the traits I am selecting for (mainly colour, size & type).

There is a Gouldian website that shows the feathers and explains them, but I can;t find it just now.
LML

Was that Marek's one maybe?

Thank you, that makes it clearer.
I have seen Marek's site, but my link seems to be broken now

Brett