I hope Finchme readers had a great Christmas and everyone has a happy New Year.  A very special wish goes to Amelita Escalona who had to endure a dreadful year, health wise, in 2008 and I’m sure you’ll join me in  wishing her a speedy recovery and all the best in 2009.  Some of you who may be members of BIRDS know how hard she has worked for Philippine aviculture and the have all benifited from her role as secretary. The club is a great starting point for any aviculturist in central Luzon.

I had a measure of success while I was away during the Christmas/New Year period but some losses too and I suppose that’s the power of natural selection in action.  My second pair of cut-throats (the ones that don’t know how to raise young) are incubating so that will present another tragedy soon but the first pair has a nest of 6, week-old hatchlings and 7 other youngsters crowding the aviary.  My “good” stars are incubating again which is fortunate as their remaining youngster appears to be missing as is it’s Gouldian nest-mate.  The other 3 Gouldian youngsters I had in December appear healthy which makes up for the death of a sitting hen from my second pair while I was away.  There are 6 juvenile zebras as well. My Shaft-tail & Zebra pair is responsible for 4 of these.  I don’t seem to have any luck with monomorphic species such as my owls, shaft-tails and munias (Java, chestnut, white bellied, scaly breasted) which still show no sign of nesting so I guess they aren’t true pairs.

Being Australian I couldn’t help but see Baz Luhrmann’s movie Australia over the Christmas/New Year break while I was home and I had to hurry as it’s not so good that it will hang around until our national Day on January 26 (Australia Day).  While it’s not a great film and while it has it’s faults it does have finches!  If you look closely in the lounge room of Lady Sarah Ashley Kimberley (Nicole Kidman) homestead, there is a crowded cage of Gouldians, stars, double bars (owls), longtails (shaft-tails) and a diamond firetail!  Ahhh, how could they get that wrong - it’s supposed to be the painted firetail but I suspect the interior shots were done in Fox Studios in Sydney rather than Kununurra and a careless researcher furnished the wrong species.  The same researcher must have also forgotten to look at a map because I can’t work out why anyone would want to drove a mob of cattle from the Kimberley to Darwin via the Bungle Bungle ranges as it’s certainly the long way but it did gave an opportunity for yet another breathtaking view of outback scenery and some sloppy CG. The accompanying photo from  Frank Neilson shows a mixed flock (Gouldians, Shaft-tails, Masked and Pictorellas) at Timber Creek in the Northern Territory in 2003.

  While in Sydney I visited one of the best finch specialist retailers – Ace Colony Birds owned by Robert Jakovlievic( SOFTBILLS@PRIMUSONLINE.COM.AU). Here’s a list I pulled from the Trading Post of what he had for sale – just to make us all jealous:

An to top it off  he has more to come and knows what else is out there:

 Of course getting birds back to the Philippines does present a few problems so I had to make do with purchasing a few supples and industry magazines which I’ll review at a later date.  If the Finchme community got together we could organise to import either independantly or through one of the Cartimar Shops .  This latter option is probably the best option as there are certain requirements like obtaining import permits, having quarantine facilites and having a large enough order to make it worthwhile as the fixed costs (cages, freight, veterinary inspection and export licencing charges), mimimum order and not to forget the cost of some species too make this an expensive exercise.  A petshop can offset some of these through sales of high interest birds like canaries which can be imported for less than P1200 a piece but of course they will have to sell for a lot more than that to make it profitable. Since there are no native parrot finches for sale here I’m intersted in importing some – like the red-faced parrot finch shown in the accompanying photograph. If there is interest then please respond to the post and see what we can work out.