Things with Wings

The finches are breeding like crazy. How fast are they breeding? Well, while I was filling the water dish, some finches laid two eggs in their seed dish.

A couple of times a day, a too-small baby will end up on the bottom of the aviary. I then go in and pick up the hapless little thing (they look like little dinosaurs until they grow their feathers) and try to find a nest with babies of similar size and coloring. I sometimes succeed. I sometimes put them in the wrong nests, and often the parents in that nest will just take over the finch-rearing.

But it’s getting to be standing room only and I’ve been running an ad in the Recycler to find homes for some of the newer finch generation.



I’m putting a cap of 50 on how many I’ll sell at a time, and I’ve had many inquiries, and several people wanting 50 finches, as well as someone wanting 20, and someone wanting 10. Sounds promising, right? Well, so far the only one who actually showed up was a woman who had one pure white finch, but was unsure of its sex, and wanted some friends for him. Chris pre-caught a dozen all white finches (including some all-white males, which are rare). She brought him along and we sexed him. But when she saw all the colors, she decided she didn’t want all white finches. She wanted lots of variety, so they’d make all sorts of interesting babies.



The problem with our aviary is that there are just too many spectacular choices. They’re all very fast and they’re not all for sale. So she’d point to one she liked and poor Chris would have to try and catch that one. Of course, as soon as you move in the aviary all the finches swoosh off to another corner. The odds of catching (or even seeing) the finch being indicated are pretty slim.

By then end of the hour, he’d caught probably 50 different finches, of which she chose three.

Okay. So we still have finches in need of homes, and if I’m very nice Chris will catch some again.



That gave me the theme for this week’s charmed jewelry: things with wings.

There had to be something for my darker side, of course. I had some great bats carved of hematite, which is a healing stone with a lovely richness to it. I also had some black onyx nuggets I got when I was in Albuquerque, and the two just set each other off. So there’s a a necklace, bracelet, and earrings with bats.