Aussie Finch Forum

We have one pair of singers in an aviary and a spare cock in another. The pair were bought together from a breeder and are meant to be unrelated, I think this is their 1st breeding season. We have not had singers before so not familiar with their habits.
They have been happy in the small aviary but no signs of courting, nesting or breeding as such. They ahve had an open canary nest in there for a while but have done nothing with it. The other weekend I added a small gouldian nesting box with the top removed, as another option, and yesterday I added a second canary nest. From my understanding singers breed in autumn. Our weather has been quite warm until recently with no rain.
They are fed a standard finch mix, occasionally get greens and the odd green seed head. Have put egg biscuit mix a couple of times but they don't seem too interested.
I am not sure why there are no signs of breeding. Should we swap the males around to see what happens? is there something else we are not doing that would trigger the breeding instinct?
Thank you for any advice.

flap wrote:We have one pair of singers in an aviary and a spare cock in another. The pair were bought together from a breeder and are meant to be unrelated, I think this is their 1st breeding season. We have not had singers before so not familiar with their habits.
They have been happy in the small aviary but no signs of courting, nesting or breeding as such. They ahve had an open canary nest in there for a while but have done nothing with it. The other weekend I added a small gouldian nesting box with the top removed, as another option, and yesterday I added a second canary nest. From my understanding singers breed in autumn. Our weather has been quite warm until recently with no rain.
They are fed a standard finch mix, occasionally get greens and the odd green seed head. Have put egg biscuit mix a couple of times but they don't seem too interested.
I am not sure why there are no signs of breeding. Should we swap the males around to see what happens? is there something else we are not doing that would trigger the breeding instinct?
Thank you for any advice.

Flap Hi,firstly i have never had GS nest in a canary nest cup and have always built their own nest in the brush.GSs in my area nest when it is quite cold(early winter on)so i think WAs weather is to hot yet for them to be interested to go to nest as the cooler weather seems to spur them on.Give them a few months and see what happens,i think you will be surprised and don't worry about feeding egg&biscuit till then. Cheers Craig

Definately agree with Crochnshas.

Here in SYD the singers i have bred have always been from Jun-sept.

The definately preferred to build there own nest in brush, especially the wire towers stuffed with brush.

They will need greens daily when breeding and consistancy with this is key.

Thistle, chickweed and any seeding grass is relished.

With the spare cock bird, is he in adjoing aviary? i have found the cock birds are disrupted by each other if they can fight through the wire, however song from the other cock bird can help fire the pair up.

Having said that,if at the start of the season, the pairs are housed side by side which we have had, sometime you can see opposing partners feeding each other through the wire, in this case swap the cock birds.

Have also found GS hit and miss between seasons, some seasons they fire and others they dont.

For nesting material, try and get a hold of flock, in addition to coconut fibre and standard nesting material.

Good Luck.

Thanks for the replies. I did wonder if the warm weather and lack of rain was a factor, but also thought they would breed earlier than they obviously do. Also we don't have enough brush in there for them at the moment so will make sure we add more. The spare cock is within ear shot but they cannot see each other.

You should do well.

I feel GS also do better from their 2nd year, just be patient with them.

Also their life and breeding span is a little longer than say waxbills.

Question for Lukec what is flock that you refer to, i been told to use kupoc and toi toi (dont know if you get that in Aussie) among other plant material

Otherwise known as Pampas grass.

Mine love cotton wool and build a nest using it almost exclusively and never use a canary nest, it’s nearly always in a wire cylinder of brush . I had a young one fledge to day . last year I bred 12 , 2010 I bred 22.They have access to maggots ,sprouted seed and green seeding heads.Hope that helps. cheers

Singers are fairly long-lived finches which also means they can be slow to mature (compared to most other finches). If they were bred in the latter half of last season they may not be sufficiently mature to nest until the latter half of this one. If mature enough they can nest as early as February but most pairs don't start until around April. Very adaptable birds regarding diet - varied, consistent diet best. Love the fluffy stuff as nest material but still provide stronger fibrous material (eg.coconut fibre) as well to prevent nest collapse. I'd also keep the spare male away from the pair's aviary.
Good luck.

My mate has a pair of Green Singer thats hes only stopped breeding this year at the grand old age of 13 years of age both birds but apparently they can live to 20 years.They still look like good young birds