Aussie Finch Forum

If you plant some grevillia's in the aviary...mine used to hunt amongst the flowers all day. Looked like they were eating nectar but I suspect they were hunting bugs amongst the flowers. My old aviary was 1.8m x 3.6 m, heavily planted. I bred reasonable numbers, not huge, with no supplied livefood at all.

Only now that they are nesting are they having minimeal worms. We have pots in avairy which attract midgies. also noticed they fossick in the potting mix (esp newly introduced pots) so guessing they would find bugs. In addition have been putting in aphid infested shoots for them to help themselves.

You're safe bringing termites onto your property - as long as you don't have the queen. The workers are what you feed to the birds and while thery are all ostensibly female they are sterile. I'm not sure about termites but with the other social insects the founding queen mates only once in thier life and stores the sperm to make females and the unfertilized (haploid) eggs become males. When you store termiltes you need to keep them surrounded by a moat of water, not so much to keep them in but to keep out preditory ants. Ideal pets actually but I think we all prefer finches.

Fruit flies & frozen Pinkies

I do not class them as a live food eater,maybe white ants(termites) but I have not seen them at my live food station.
By the way for us Aussies,Pinkies are small maggots and sold in the UK.I think the colour is a dye but I am not sure.

pinkies (baby mice) can be purchased from reptile stores here.
unfortunately you cant buy maggots as you can mealworms here like you can in Germany

I have a pair of OBs nesting at the moment and the hen has been eating mini mealworms for the last couple of weeks. prior to that they hadn't touched them.

I am still waiting for my OBs to start nesting. The Ruddies have babies at the moement and are devouring the minimealies like crazy-hoping my OBs will take the hint and start soon!!

fingers crossed for you KB
Flab, the going for the mealworms indicates that there are young in the nest good luck!

Hi Jay, we definetely have 2, maybe 3 young. If they didn't die in today's hot weather. How on earth do I keep the aviary cool on a 39 degree day???