Middle; Napolean Weaver femaleYoung Napoleon Weavers among
the foliageFINCH FUNDAMENTALS
AUTHOR AND IMAGES MARCUS POLLARD BSc (Hons)what we now know as Aussie Napoleons.
The history of these guys in Australian
aviaries has been a rollercoaster at times
and ‘back in the day’ they were certainly
not the relatively cheap fi nch they are
today. When we fi rst saw them, they
were around $3000 a pair and females
were extremely scarce. At that time a
male would cost you $500 and a female
$2700! Fast forward to today and a pair is
generally around the $400 mark.
How did this happen? Well, I’m quite
pleased to say that I had inside knowledge
into two people that were breeding them
when they were high-priced and their
efforts in producing this species are
legendary. One of those two was in my
own home state of Tasmania and the other
in Victoria. Without the time, effort and
knowledge applied to this species, chances
are they would still be commanding such
a price as to put them out of the reach
of many average aviculturists—myself
included!PERSONAL ENCOUNTERS
As usual, I feel the need to digress at this
point; please bear with me. Back when
they were commanding high prices, I
was on a camp with a number of other
teachers on picturesque Maria Island on
the east coast of Tasmania. I remember
I was sitting watching a few Beautiful
Firetails that abound on the island when a
teacher, who hailed from South Africa, satNapolean Weaver male
HAVING HAD A GO AT KEEPING most
of the ever-shrinking array of exotics
still available in Australia, and a host of
others over my avicultural journey, there
was one species that I had never kept,
and I felt it was high time I remedied that
shortcoming.
That species is the Napoleon Weaver
or Yellow-crowned Bishop Euplectes afer
which naturally resides in a large area of
Africa—southwards down to Zanzibar
and down the eastern side of The Sudan,
right into South Africa. Perhaps because
of that huge expanse there is considerable
variation within wild Napoleon
populations. I read an article on them by
a South African author and his birds were
vastly different—blacker on the front—to
the ones available in Australia.
I once consulted Russell Kingston for
his thoughts on this obvious variation. He
told me that the Napoleon Weaver has a
fragmented distribution within its overall
range, which tends to favour various ‘local
variations’ popping up due to this limited
isolation. He also told me that the original
Napoleons imported into Australia were
from West Africa and hence distinct from
many of those seen in overseas collections.
Always a source of fi nchy facts, he stated
that the ones seen in South Africa were E.
afer taha, which were also in Australia at
one time and were characterised by their
dark black fronts. These are long gone, it
would seem, or at least assimilated into
NAPOLEON Weavers
down and started chatting ‘bird talk’. The
topic quickly turned to the host of African
waxbills that we Aussies lust over. I asked
him about the weavers over there, being
a huge fan, and he started to describe the
Napoleon Weavers which were as common
there as House Sparrows are in Australia.
He said his ‘job’ as a child was to shoot
them for his mother because they used
to poo all over her washing. When I told
him their price in Australia, he went white
and looked at me very oddly—horses for
courses I guess!
I remember seeing Napoleon Weavers
fi rst at Benalla, in a massive open aviary.
The owner said that they mostly bred
males and that females were a rare
commodity. The opportunity presented
itself for a friend of mine to get a pair
from a chap in Quakers Hill, NSW, and
these proved to be excellent parents.
The hunt was then on to locate as
many different bloodlines as we could
throughout Australia. A few swaps with
the chap previously mentioned in Victoria
and they regularly started to produce
decent numbers—including the all-
important females.
So the present availability of these
birds in aviculture owes a great deal to
the prowess of these two breeders. As my
mate always says, when you live off your
birds you have to be ‘reasonably’ good at it
in order to continue eating!
With all that in mind and the original