Exhibition Show Bengalese Finches - Pair with Young

New Selfs

A few weekends ago I picked up some new Selfs from my friend Bruce and they are very nice. Bruces bloodline of Selfs dates back to the 60's when they were more common. Thankfully he still has an attraction to breeding and showing these lovely birds and is one of the few that do. I have had my Queensland Selfs since September and have been patiently waiting to pick up some of Bruce's excess finches since then. Bruce has Gingers and Chocolates and does not have any Chestnut Mutation in his finches bloodline to my knowledge.

These Selfs are very nice and have quite stocky bodies and good head size.

I'm happy to have some more Selfs now. 

In my small aviary it is starting to get a bit cramped. I am going to move into a house in the next year and I am looking forward to having some decent sized aviaries and even a bird room, so looking forward I am going to try and develop some more stock and I am going to move my current collection of Aussie Bengos to my families aviary. That way I can still pick up a few more Selfs as I find them and will have a decent starting point of stock numbers when I move into more space.

Cheers

Local Selfs

One of the three breeders of Self Bengalese that I am in touch with is Bruce and he lives a good drive out of Sydney. He is a member of the NSW Finch Exhibitors Society that I have just become a member of and I have visited with him once before and speak often on the phone. He has just finished off his breeding season and has sent me a couple of pics of his Self Bengalese. These pictures are a bit more clear than the earlier ones that I have posted and shows well how nicely sized these Show Quality Self's are. Bruce keeps Chocolates and Gingers.

Bruce tells me that he first picked up his Self Bengalese when he was younger in the 1960's and Bruce goes as far to say that in those days in Sydney, Selfs were more popular than the pied and would win more pizes on the show bench. It is safe to say that Bruce's Bengos are still descendants of this early Sydney bloodline.

Euro Red/Brown

I have never been particularly attracted to the Fawn or Ginger Pied Bengalese, mainly because the Fawn in Australia generally is a mild tan coloured Finch and does not have the same colouring and marking definition of the darker Bengos. This being said, I have not really personally seen many Ginger Selfs and I am looking forward to that.





 
On that note I have come across a few photos recently of the Euro Ginger or Red/Brown that I think are very impressive. The Euro Red/Brown  has very well presented and defined underbelly markings that have been established overseas through hybridizing and careful selective breeding over many years.













Also the degree of RED in this Bengo I just love and it is my opinion that the Red/Brown is the most "bright" or "colourful" of all the Bengalese mutations, where by nature the humble Bengo is a brown Finch.

Ginger Self Bengo.1

There have always been two common colours of the pied Bengalese Mannikin in Australia one is the Chocolate Bengo and the other is called the Fawn or Ginger. In Australia our Ginger Bengalese generally looks more "Fawn" than "Ginger" where the common variety has a distinct tan-like colour. In the Selfs that I have seen so far this type of colour is often represented like the image to the right here and show hints of orange-like tones in them (image from outside Australia).




I am learning quickly that there is an infinite amount of variation in colour between individual Bengalese and the subtle differences in the amount of RED, BROWN and DARK BROWN or lack there of contribute to this.

In Europe the standard for Ginger is much darker than the previously mentioned colour and is also called Red/Brown (Shown Right), to the point that a Bengo with colourings as the top picture is often named a Dilute Fawn or Dilute Red/Brown.


The Colour Standard proposed by the Bengalese Breeders Society in Australia (Click Here to see Standard) states that the Fawn or Ginger colour is to be a dark red brown. In my opinion the finch shown here to the right is an example of this.


Another thing to note is that a key distinguishing factor of the Fawn or Ginger Self Bengalese Mannikin is that the top half of the beak is of a similar colour to that of the bottom half. You can see examples of this in the top two images.

One of my Chestnut Selfs shows some distinctive Red/Brown colourings but can can not be called a Ginger because of its dark upper beak. There are some references on the net about a Fox Red Bengo and I gather that this foreign Bengo has been bred selectively for the most Red colourings. .....Sounds interesting ;-)

A Pleasant Suprise

So I decided to look into the Finch Club option. I first inquired with Rob Jakovljevic, the owner of an excellent bird dealership Ace Colony Aviaries in Wentworthville Sydney ((02) 96350598). I had been visiting there many times and he always has an excellent variety of finches and of course Bengos.  He has continually proven himself to be a wealth of knowledge and always happy to help and convey his passion for birds. Even Rob despite his high turnover of finches rarely sees any Self Bengos come through his aviaries, he said to me that it had been a few years since he has had one there. Rob put me onto a newspaper that had a listing for all of the registered bird clubs in Australia so with this in my hot little hands I looked through to find something relevant for me here in Sydney. Let me say right now, that no matter who I called from that list of contacts every person I spoke to was very friendly and extremely forthcoming and also anyone that I was referred to call and speak with were also very accommodating. This in itself was totally refreshing in the rat race of Sydney where it is by nature a "survival of the fittest" city, it was nice to find a natural ease with people to chat Finches.
I have to admit I rang a lot of people...."a lot of people" to try and find the Self Bengalese with not much success. Generally, people that are in the exotic finch breeding  clubs like the Finch Society of Australia (which I have since joined) do not have a particular interest in Bengalese other than for fostering other finches so their appearance is not particularly important and from ringing around within this club and its associates there was not anyone who kept the Self Bengos. I had exhausted my avenues locally on the phone with much disappointment and I would have to wait to visit the Finch Society of Australia at my first meeting. I had been made a suggestion by a few of the people that I spoke with, and that was "if you are interested in good quality Bengos then you should approach the show guys" and with this I was told that people within the finch showing scene concentrate more on breeds like the Bengalese for breeding colour and quality.
Following this I rang the Finch Exhibitors Club in Sydney, not really knowing who they were I was told that the club exhibits Australian Finches, Foreign Finches, Hybrid Finches and Bengalese Finches. Through Gordon the club contact I was told that the key person that concentrates on Bengalese is a particular man named Les but he only breeds pied Bengos. Through all of my inquiries over recent times I have been told time and time again by numerous different people that Les is the leader in breeding the "best" show quality Bengalese and dominates the show scene with his pied Bengos here in Sydney and arguably throughout Australia. This was sounding promising!!! I rang him and he told me that he doesn't keep Selfs.....BOOOO! the only person that he knows who keeps the self Bengalese is a man named Bruce who lives near Newcastle,


I rang Bruce and he was very helpful. Bruce said to me that he had some Self Chocolates and Gingers (Fawns)....Whooo Whooo!!! And there it was, a win! I found someone!!!

 





Bruce sent me a couple of pics of his Self Bengos seen here. You can notice straight away the stockier form of the bird and the larger size than the common "Pet Shop" Bengo. The show term for the general form or shape of a Bengalese is called the "Type". Both of these aspects of Size and Type are very important for showing the Bengalese Manikin competitively and from my recent experience makes for a very attractive Bengo.


Bruce told me that he would not have any spare birds until the new year of 2012 so at that stage any immediate ideas of getting my Selfs was still on hold.