Lavender Waxbill Finches

Determining Lavender's gender from calls, housing, feeding and breeding

whatever other challenges Lavender Waxbills throw at you
after using this site at least you will know that you have pairs

determing gender of Lavender-Waxbills is not difficult
experts say it's easy from their calls - they are right

What's the problem then?
seems we are good at describing colour & smells to each other
but poor at describing complex sounds in writing

a very good breeder of Lavender Waxbills
describes the cock-call as a 'psee-psee'
listen to the clips and see whether you agree
other Lavender Waxbill breeders use other descriptions

listen to actual clips of the Waxbill's calls on following pages
the cock call has been verified by several Lavender breeders
(thanks to Alice, Di and John)
(Alice is happy with the more elusive hen call as well)

how you then describe the cock Lavender call is immaterial
you will have heard it - descriptions are then irrelevant

Positives

attractive

active

curious

friendly

easy to care for

Negatives

gender determination

plucking

schizophrenic

difficult to breed (for me anyway)

in first year of keeping Lavenders

1 - why has only 1 of 3 known breeding pairs bred under the same conditions
why has this pair laid but never bred since

2 - plucking can start quite suddenly and can get very severe
I have been told to separate such pairs with wire mesh divider until feathers grow back

3 - war - not seen this but apparently a small colony lives very happily then suddenly one pair decides to nest and all hell breaks loose - allegedly with serious results unless pair is isolated immediately

4 - the big one - gender determination
Richard Prosser determined gender by careful observation, who was bobbing to whom, was it aggressive or friendly
he was obviously extremely good at this - it is hard to argue against fertile eggs & 30+ chicks in 2006
1 hour of coaching - mainly on gender determination - and I was still useless

three successful breeders have since verified some Lavender Waxbill sound clips so we can all determine gender by call

Listen to the calls, see the sound scopes on - gender and calls/ cock call