There are two species of Silverbills, the African and the Indian. I had about three exceptional seasons with the Yellow Rumps back in the late seventies and was told, by many dealers, get rid of them and breed Chestnuts, they’re more colourful and easier to sell (wish I had them breeding like that now). I had the same problem with, believe it or not, Yellow Rumps. This experience was not only limited to Silverbills, many species that were considered dull in colourful suffered. I eventually did get rid of them and also, like many others of the time, got out of Silverbills. “Sorry son, too many Silverbills around and no one likes them, not colourful enough.” Went into the shop quiet proud of all these birds I had breed, however, came out rather disappointed. ![]() A quick trip to the Great Western Highway to Ace Colony’s bird shop, the closest and one of the few shops around Western Sydney back in them days. They did well and a few months later my aviary was rather full of Silverbills. ![]() So home I go, build an aviary and a couple weekends later I’m the proud owner of two pairs of Silverbills. His words to me were, “good little buggers them, mice with wings breed great”. One of the aviaries contained possibly 30 to 50 pale fawn coloured small finches, which he informed me were African Silverbills ( Lonchura cantons). I had spent many hours glued to the front of these aviaries watching the kaleidoscope of colour buzzing around. To my inexperienced eyes, he must have had the largest collection of birds outside a zoo. ![]() Back in the mid 1970’s, when I was about sixteen, I had a great uncle who kept a mixture of finches in four large box style aviaries.
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