Aussie Finch Forum

My three pairs of Red Eared Firetails are going well, all three are at different stages of nesting.
They are in separate 9x2 meter planted aviaries, all nests are as high in the cage as they can go.
Hoping somebody can let me know some of the nesting behaviors of these beautiful bird as its my first time keeping the Red eared Firetail.
One pair that has been feeding crazy on seed grass, soaked seed and maggots could be feeding young, haven't yet heard any baby feeding sounds. The cock bird constantly chases the hen if she gets to close,it's only a short chase.Is this a common thing the breeding Red Eared does?
The other two pairs are putting the finishing touches to their nests, lining the nests with hand fulls of white feathers.
Any advice and experiences with these birds will be a great help.

Dave

Good luck, sounds like they are doing the right thing

Went to my book '' Aviculture in Australia" by Mark Shephard. to read up on the Red Eared Firetail. There is about a page on these birds, and half of it is about the history of the birds.
Mark says that they are rare and you must try and recreate their habitat in the wild. Large aviary, densely planted, minimum 2.5 metres high. with trees and small shrubs,
with seeding grasses planted and the floor covered with leaf litter in the aviary.He says that they are very territorial and aggressive, chasing anything away from its territory including its own young. Basic diet is canary, panicum, millet seeds and seeding heads planted in the aviary. They like to forage for seed sprinkled on the aviary floor and for livefood among the litter.
He says young birds should be moved to a holding aviary before the adults start to harass them. He does say that they breed very high in the aviary and the nest is built with a cup shaped depression adjoining the main nesting chamber, this being used by the male for roosting and the young to defacate in, keeping their nest clean. He does not mention anything about hen chasing,
But some other finches do chase when the hen is sitting on eggs and gets off to go for a feed. You seem to be doing the right thing with these rare birds and I wish you the BEST OF LUCK.
Planting seeding heads is easy, just plant seed under a wire basket till the heads start appearing, then take the wire off.

There is an excellent series of articles on this topic written by Gary McCrae and published in this years Western Finch News.
From memory they were based on the information Gary provided at the Qld Finch convention several years ago.

Cheers
Brett

If they are all building nests, you are off to a good start. Hope it all works out for you.
LML

When I bred them back in the late 90's, I recall that the cock chased the hen when off the nest as well. I bred them in a 3m x 1m x 2m high aviary, 1 pair per flight. They nested midway up in the middle. Ate lots of seeding grasses and a bit of fly pupae.

By The way, Congrats to date. I hope you get a heap of them out

Put 'Red Eared Firetail' into search . .

Quite a bit of info to be found

Plenty of variety in fresh greens (seeds and leaf) is the key . . and one pair sole occupants as per Firetail's advice

A lot of their aviary requirements have been exaggerated in some of the available literature

Congrats on your success

Congrats on your success. Craig

Craig52 wrote:

arthur wrote:Put 'Red Eared Firetail' into search . .

Quite a bit of info to be found

Plenty of variety in fresh greens (seeds and leaf) is the key . . and one pair sole occupants as per Firetail's advice

A lot of their aviary requirements have been exaggerated in some of the available literature

Congrats on your success

Agree Arthur,lots more up to date literature is available online and the birds are being bred by quite a few now which is great to know.Some of the earlier publications are good to refer to but are 20 years behind as aviculture has come a long since with housing,feeding and management.

Good on you Dave, Craig

Are you sayin I am behind Craig?? Only problem I find with the internet is that it is very easy for people to make claims about breeding birds and have not necessarily done so. You need to be very careful about what you read, especially regarding diagnosing illness and treating