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

Pastel (Dilute Ginger) Self Bengalese

Last weekend my friend Tim sent me an article from a magazine that he found from 2002 that was written about the Bengalese Breeders Society in Qld by Mark Shipway you can download the article in my Download Library HERE. It is an excellent article that helps to paint the picture of the group's ideals in regards to the Aussie Bengo. Tim and James have often spoken about a colour called the Pastel and the colour is described in the BBS Colour Standard, this is a colour that I have been told about previously but have never been able to see an example. Because the Mutation is described in a similar way to the Clearwing I have to admit I have possibly gone off on the wrong tangent. I say this because there is a brief description and picture of this mutation in this great article. It is a beauty, I'm quite impressed as to how striking the Finch is. Since 2002 Self Bengalese and their breeders have been in decline as with this colour. As with the Silver (Dilute Chestnut) I have not heard of any being in anyones collections, however Tim has recently told be that he knows a breeder in Qld that has some pied Pastels so there may be hope for this Mutation yet.

This is the Australian Pastel pictured in the article on the Left.













An intersting thing that I have noticed about this particular picture of the Australian Pastel is that where on the darker Bengos like the Chocolate Chestnut and even the Ginger the traditional feather markings of the Bengalese breast scolloping is a primarily dark feather (the same colour as the head), and a lighter accented rim or outer edge, see below;

Chocolate

Chestnut

Ginger










Where as this Australian Pastel appears to have a kind of inverted appearance to these where the main colour of the breast feather is lighter than the darker rim;

Pastel











In the above mentioned BBS article Mark Shipway makes some comments about this Mutation;

 

You can see from his comments that Mark believed that this particular mutation was independant to the standard Ginger and its dilute factor.

Here are some examples below of Bengalese from Over Seas that look a lot like the Australian one but I still think that the scolloping of these birds have a more traditional look rather than the inverted look of this Australian Pastel above.

I'm quite excited to see this Australian Mutation the Pastel fully now and look forward to seeing one in the future.

Cheers