roofi ng, so there’s another urban myth
busted, that weavers won’t build/breed in
fully-covered aviaries.
Two to three white eggs with faint
brown speckling are laid. Mine adopted
the adage of ‘if it hatches, we’ll rear it’ (for
this season at any rate). I again consulted
with Allen on the incubation period and he
believed it was around the 11-day mark,
with the chicks leaving the nest after a
further 11 days. That’s a few days quicker
than the Grenadier and a lot shorter time
than Orange Bishops.
They appear to be devoted parents and
all the chicks that have fl edged this season
have survived to maturity. Chicks are
relatively easy to sex when they leave the
nest, as are Grenadier Weavers, in which
the feet alone will tell you if they are male
or female.
Once there are chicks in the nest,
the propensity for live food increases
dramatically, with the adult birds anxiously
awaiting your arrival at the aviary in order
to check what live food goodies you are
about to present. To this end, I have taken
to using two Resun® AF-2005 Automatic
Fish Feeders loaded with mealworms and
set to drop at alternate hours in order to
ensure they have enough live food when I
am at work.
Napoleons leave the nest a little
underdone in hotter weather and if you
see them belting about on the fl oor, don’t
touch them as they will clamber up intoNESTING AND CHICKS
The nest is mostly hidden away in foliage
and, unlike the Grenadier, there is no
stripping of the area around the nest,
which is great for the rest of the foliage.
Mind you, they will still decimate every
fresh spike your grasses put up—any
grass, every time! In my aviary, the nests
are constructed from Pennesetum and
Miscanthus grasses and they are brutally
‘ravaged’ in order to construct said nests.
Despite this, the nests themselves can be
diffi cult to spot at times—a trait Napoleons
share with Orange Bishops but not
Grenadiers. Most of the nests in my aviary
are around the tops of the bushes, with
only one built about 1m from the ground.
The nest is also lined with fi ner grasses.
Ours are given November/Blown/Fairy
Grass (or whatever name you care to
call ‘Bird Grass’) and the nest lined with
fi ner material. Here I must add that Allen
recently asked me what mine were using to
line the nest once the Swamp Grass lining
went in. I told him that they had used a
heap of cotton wool, cotton lintas and red
Border Collie fur. In fact every nest had
the cotton lintas woven into the external
part of the nest as well. In three cases the
only way I spotted the nest was because of
this white cotton. He laughed as it seems a
chap had once suggested he was ‘deluded’
for stating they used such materials, so, the
picture here will tell a thousand stories.
Since then I have also had two nests go up
made from emu feathers, so who knows
what these birds will use when they feel
like it. So much for the ‘growing grasses
only’ purists—that’s the nature of the
fi nch, I guess. The nests are all under 100%COL WESTERN SHEDS
... making bird aviaries for 30 years
LANSVALE (02) 8707 0777
24/76 Hume Hwy, Lansvale NSWPENRITH (02) 4721 7388
Shop 9/109 Batt St, Penrith NSWhttp://www.colwesternsheds.com.auHuge range of standard
D.I.Y. kit form aviaries.See our website or see
them on display in one
of our showrooms.Nests have been constructed using cotton lintas, emu feathers and coconut fi bre