My birds - circa 1990's

THIS is what started it all !

One day I went into a Petland store after some fish food... and instead ended up walking out with this cage and the cute little guy on the left. Adam . My very FIRST bird! He's sitting next to Benson his Shafttail finch buddy that I got soon after.



I soon met a local breeder of Lady Gouldian finches, and the finch MBS took off!! He had all sorts of color mutations... :32: (there's a blue capped sitting with the Gouldians).

The Lady Gouldian finches had a calm almost domestic personality close to Zebras or Societies, so they did well in the flight cages. Still, I wished I had an aviary.








I hope you enjoyed the pics . More pics to follow (different species).

I then got into several differnt "exotic" species, but sadly I had to rehome them. After a fairly short time it became evident that certain species were too wild and spastic (these were extremely "wild" wild caught birds), and really needed to be in an outdoor aviary which I didn't have. Beginner's mistakes .

Peter's Twinspot and Parrot finch


Cuban finches


Purple Grenadier. I took "Chester" to get this professional pic done. A rare species, he was an excellent singer. Sorry for pic quality, I took a snapshot of these photos.

The Cordon Bleu finches were another species like the Gouldians that were calm enough for cages in the house. The pair, Jerry and Sandy. When Sandy died, Jerry was sad for a couple days then said "oh well!" and started singing for a new mate. He wasted no time lol. It was then that he went to go live in the bachelor pad (with the Gouldians) and the species got along well.

What gorgeous birds! So fun to see the exact birdie that got your addiction going !

Nice Thanks for sharing

Such beautiful birds. Our hope is that in a couple years we will move into the country and buy a home of our own. My husband wants an aviary of finches really bad. He loves them a lot.

Mimsy01 said:

Such beautiful birds. Our hope is that in a couple years we will move into the country and buy a home of our own. My husband wants an aviary of finches really bad. He loves them a lot.

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Thank you , and Thanks for the complements too Shawna and Terri . I miss having them, but I don't miss a bunch of seed hulls and tiny poop splattered everywhere. They poop while flying so it gets on the walls, etc.

That would be so nice to have... If it were possible, I would have finches again in a heartbeat, but only with an aviary. Gouldians and their mutations. I'm not sure how easy/hard it is to get the other various exotic ones nowdays since legal export has closed. I'd also get mutation colors of English budgies, certain Australian grass keet species, and a pair of plumheaded parakeets! Not sure I'll ever have an aviary, but I can dream!

What a nice visit to your past, Julie! With those pics must come some powerful memories! Thanks for sharing!!

Scott said:

What a nice visit to your past, Julie! With those pics must come some powerful memories! Thanks for sharing!!

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Thank you Scott! I have more to share, but I've noticed the forum hasn't been too busy lately. I want more people to see lol ! I still have to share some past parrot pics, and my cockatiel. It's very emotional looking at those pics though.

What beautiful birds! Each one of them is like a jewel, such brilliant colors! I was a finch moma too a long time ago! Mine were "just" Zebra finches, but very very prolific! In no time at all I ended up with 17 of them. Mom, Pop, and 3 clutches of 5 babies each. I had to give them away before the babies had babies and separate mom and dad or they would have continued to multiply non-stop.

Bring on more old photos! I wish I had some of my own.

Julie, I love these pics, thank you for sharing. All the birds are beautiful. Such a sweet pic of the Cordon Bleu finches. Chester was stunning, very nice pro photo.

Can't wait to see more!

Thank you! I love sharing my old bird pics . I will share more soon here. Then the one's in the 2000's I will do on another thread.

Love seeing the different varieties there - some amazing colours and patterns!

Thank you itchyfeet .

About the finches... I enjoyed them for several years, then after living in my bedroom for some time they started developing breathing problems. I'm not sure what kind of air purifiers there were then, I didn't know about them at the time.

I made the sad decision to rehome them to a lady I worked with who had a small aviary. She was thrilled to get them. Most of the birds had names too . After I stopped working at the store, the lady continued working there for years. When I'd go there and I'd see her, I would say hi and ask about the finches. One day, after I hadn't been in for some time, I asked how the birds were, and she said they had all died! She didn't know why they all died within the same year, and she didn't want to replace any for fear that they had a disease or something (although she said they looked healthy and didn't seem like any "reason" they should have died).

After I had composed myself from hearing the sad news, I said "It wasn't a disease, they were all the SAME age and they must have all died of old age!!" I had gotten all of them near the same time when my MBS hit lol, and got all of them within months of each other. I bought all of them as young adults from my breeder, all were just colored out. The textbooks say their full healthy lifespan is around 10 years. It WAS just about the 10 year mark when she told me they had all died!

I love seeing your pictures, thanks for sharing them. I love the colors, Husband would say they look like candy, lol. I love how you went in for fish food and came out with that cage and birds, lol. This thread has me thinking about my tiel and budgie. I'll have to pull my picture box out and find pics of them.

Taw5106 said:

I love seeing your pictures, thanks for sharing them. I love the colors, Husband would say they look like candy, lol. I love how you went in for fish food and came out with that cage and birds, lol. This thread has me thinking about my tiel and budgie. I'll have to pull my picture box out and find pics of them.

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Thanks Tracey . I'd love to see your old pics too! I know, it was dangerous going into the pet store with my credit card lol... I don't know if I ever remembered the fish food. By that point I probably didn't care, I was too excited about my new bird LOL!

Very pretty! We had a pair of zebra finches as our first birds.

Julie, what gorgeous pics! I so love finches, so many beautiful colours
10 years is along time for finches to live, so you and the lady who took them did well by the little guys
A free male Zebra was my "Gateway" bird. Added him a female that night, and the rest is birdie history.
I'm in the same boat, got most of mine within a few months, and some were older even then.Some of the older ones have passed, but I know at some point I will lose several within a short period of time

Come on, I'm excited to see more pics!Pretty please?

After I'd had the finches for a while, I started to want a bird that I could handle.
I was not familiar with parrots, I didn't want a budgie at the time, so I set out to find the only other species I was somewhat familiar with LOL. A cockatiel of course .
This is Terry, a lutino male. He was such a trustworthy bird, that even when no one was home we left his cage open all day (actually it was out of ignorance, but it worked out). Terry was never into trouble and was reliably found in one of his favorite spots. He'd have night frights a lot I remember, but he'd always pull out his own broken blood feathers by the root. Good thing, because we didn't know any better back then. I found out later that most birds don't do that. Those were some of the things that stand out in my mind about Terry, about what a good bird he was.

Julie, my tiel had a blood feather, she passed in 2005. I came home from work and thought she was dying, bleeding to death. I took her to the ER vet, after they treated her, they addressed the issue then brought her out to me, I died laughing. She had a purple satellite dish around her neck, lol. She wore it for two days. I'm looking through my pictures, I know I have some of her with that collar on. They pulled the blood feather and luckily, she healed and I never had to deal with another blood feather again. That can be scary in itself, it was for me!