Our community aviary started with only one
white headed nun. After two or three weeks, we reluctantly concluded that we had a male.
We thought the nun was male because of a very quiet, short, plaintiff song.
In the morning,
he spent an hour or so hopping around the aviary
and singing. The rest of the day, however, was spent napping by
himself. he also had
quite scaly legs and toes, and was also less tolerant of invasions of his
personal space than the other finches. All of these factors led to our
reluctantly concluding that he was old.
The other possibility, however, was that he was just plain
lonely and having no bird of its own kind had produced some sort of melancholy in him. So
we took it upon ourselves to find him a female.
We had what we believed to be a female shipped from Ontario
in late February. Seeing the two side by side confirmed that
the original white headed nun was indeed male and that
she was also a she by the contrast in the shade of their heads. Al's is slightly whiter
than her brown tinged coloration.
Their relationship took a week or so to develop, but they
became quite inseparable and spent
much time together.
