Aussie Finch Forum

I have a pair of jacarini with the male eating a lot of mealworms from the live feed bowl. The male is bobbing up and down with grass in his beak and has been hauling a lot of nesting material around way back to the darkest area of the enclosed breeding section of the aviary. These appear to be a very secretative finch, hardly ever see the female and only get the occassional glimpse of the male doing his nest building stuff. Are they normally this secrative? They seem to love this dark heavily brushed secluded area above all others, the st helenas and the pied PF seem to also frequent this area a lot but the PF also spend a lot of time in the open sunlit areas as well. Has anyone had experience with jacarinis?-whilst they are a bit frustrating being being so elusive, they are really beautiful when "on show"
The male in his full metalic blue breeding colours in quite stunning.
Kenny

Has he picked a display perch yet? If you watch he does a back flip. Supply plenty of coconut fibre as they use this to build a cup nest. Good luck

Buzzard-1 wrote:Has he picked a display perch yet? If you watch he does a back flip. Supply plenty of coconut fibre as they use this to build a cup nest. Good luck

He has been pulling cocont fibre around-and bits if long grass as well-I will watch out for the display perch behaviour

Will they raise a brood on mealworms as the live food
Thanks

Kenny

G'day Kenny, yes they are very shy birds, unless you are in their face a couple of times a day they will prefer to be in an around the undergrowth of the aviary an generally stay away form you. As said below give them coconut fibre, raw cotton, raw wool if you have it. They may raise a chick or two just on mealworms, but they are so nutritionally so unbalanced you may have issues with teh chicks surviving. The parents will flit around the aviary getting any insect they can in preference to mealworms. If you cant do bush flies nor termites I suggest you adopt a suggestion given by a forum member here that said they use a plastic waste bin (ie one that is a screen or grill type) and bury it in thw avairy floor put wire across the top fill with scraps that would nornmally go to the compost and as the ferment flies breed the jacs will be picking them off continuously. The juices will go into the ground. My jacs knockoff the freshly hatched flies that cant fly when they first hatch from the pupal casing. Any spare pupa go into the avairy for all to consume.
Good luck

Trilobite wrote:G'day Kenny, yes they are very shy birds, unless you are in their face a couple of times a day they will prefer to be in an around the undergrowth of the aviary an generally stay away form you. As said below give them coconut fibre, raw cotton, raw wool if you have it. They may raise a chick or two just on mealworms, but they are so nutritionally so unbalanced you may have issues with teh chicks surviving. The parents will flit around the aviary getting any insect they can in preference to mealworms. If you cant do bush flies nor termites I suggest you adopt a suggestion given by a forum member here that said they use a plastic waste bin (ie one that is a screen or grill type) and bury it in thw avairy floor put wire across the top fill with scraps that would nornmally go to the compost and as the ferment flies breed the jacs will be picking them off continuously. The juices will go into the ground. My jacs knockoff the freshly hatched flies that cant fly when they first hatch from the pupal casing. Any spare pupa go into the avairy for all to consume.
Good luck

Thanks I will try it

Kenn

I forgot to ask-I have no dirt or gravel in my aviary. I have an elevated walkway with the aviary floor 2ft of the ground. Can I put a rubbish biun in with fruit in it even though it will not touch the ground?

Yes you probably could but it woudl be best to ensure that the juices coming out ofthe compost bins dont foul the aviary ie dont let the birds have contact. All yu want if the flies coming off the bin arrnagement so that the Jacs can get at them

Having read the above posts... it seems I should move my worm farm into the aviary and change the top for a wire top. It has a drain for "worm juice" which drains into a 2 litre bottle. There are always fruit/vinegar/ferment flies hanging around it.

Mad Ozzie

I have only ever had one Jacarini Cockbird recently in my small enclosure. I don't have him now but found him to be quite intriguing, the Jacarini have quite a unique manner to them in general and as mentioned above he would often sit behind the cover of some brush that I had in the enclosure. My wife called him the Ninja because he would move from the brush to eat and drink with an impressive stealth .

I look forward to having more space in the future and keeping a few pairs.

Here's a pic of my Jacarini