Aussie Finch Forum

I'm new at keeping finches alhough I've had a parrot for 30 plus years and kept canaries. Last fall I got apair of long tail grass finches and a pair of gouldians. The grass finches showed courting behavior this spring, but the gouldians didn't (the male Gouldian is very young- still has a green head and incomplete adult plumage).
Someone-I thought the grass finch- began laying eggs. Then I think the female Gouldian hijacked the nest, and began laying eggs. In any event, there were a total of seven eggs laid, of which 3 hatched, after being brooded by the gouldian.
The chicks are now 19 days old and should be about to emerge from the nest, having been fed by both Gouldians, who drive the grass finches off!
The only pictures I can find of gouldian chicks show them as light brown with two red spots on either side of their heads. From what I can see so far these chicks are charcoal grey and no spots.
What are they? Has the gouldian female brooded and raised grass finch chicks?
There are still 4 unhatched, presumably non-fertile eggs in the nest- possibly ones laid by the Gouldian female.
For what it's worth, the grass finches have remained very agitated and continue to try to access the nest.

Noraml coloured Gouldian young are more a grey/green back colour with buff/cream chest, they dont have any colour on them at all for the first few weeks. The young also have mouth nodules, generally the blue as can be seen in this pic. However mutations can have different colour nodules and will also appear different in the back colour
This is a normal backed young gouldian. The second pic show the early stages of getting the adult colours. This can take quite a few months.

Grass finches can be identified by thier mouth marking even when just hatched and great site to look is Hofmann Photography. If it comes down to a choice of the two species (long-tails and gouldians) the it's easy to distinguish the two - Gouldians like all parrot finches have bluish luminescent nodules towards the corners of their mouth and the long-tails don't. Your birds are 19 days old and the juvenite colouration also makes tem easy to distinguish as can be seen by the first reply. I'm sure you'll know after seeing the photos posted on this site. Good luck with your move to finches.

An update:
One of the three birds that hatched died. Two of the birds that exited the nest were fully feathered- definitely young Gouldians.
The third one lagged way behind- exited a few days after- but only black, incomplete plumage.
That one was dead the next day on the cage floor.
The two survivors seem to be doing very well, and are now over 3 months old. Mother seems to be nesting again.
When should I expect the young birds to molt and get their adult plumage? Is it as much as a year?

Sometimes can take 1 to 2 yrs to fully colour up....Do you have a couple of nest sites for each pair of birds? If not it is usually the reason nests get taken over by over Finches....