Aussie Finch Forum

Hi All,

This has been bugging me for a long time now and I cant seem to find an answer as yet.
I notice two different eye colours found in Emblemas.
One, a solid (virtually) Black Eye and
Two, an Eye that displays a yellowish iris or ring of colour around the perimeter of the eyeball.

I was wondering if these differences are understood. Are they a subspecies thing?
I took note of some Orange Mutation Emblemas today at a dealer that still had the all Black eye, so any theory of the lighter colour affecting the eye is out.
Its not a clear Cock/Hen thing as I have seen it across both (I think).
This Image above shows clearly the yellow or light iris colour.

This image above of some of my past Emblemas show both the Black eye in the foreground and the Yellow in the background.

Any input (as always) is much appreciated.

Well,i have gone back through all the painted pics in painted and every one of them has a circle around the iris except for young birds.
But if you blow your pic up in size,the hen has a dark circle and the cock has a light circle,maybe its a sex thing. Craig

Well as my Painteds are normals...they look like pic one....evil looking my wife says lol

The "Young Bird" idea sounds fair, however, this pair (bottom picture) hatched 3 young. So this one pictured was not a fledgling (from a dealer so could have been ancient?), but possibly the eye takes longer to colour???

Or maybe they can bring it on,like Indian Ringnecks and African Greys when they get stirred up,scarey looking birds in the eye. Craig

Just went down and looked the painteds in the eye. Both have the dark eyes. He is one of Spanna's boys and a couple of years old. She is a local lass and a year or two older than him. Maybe birds eyes vary like peoples do.
LML