Birds In Cages Reminders Of Bullfinches Eating Buds Of Cherry Trees In Garden

Most years at home the Bullfinches would arrive in the Spring to feast on the buds of the cherry trees in the garden. The vivid colors of the bullfinches were similar to the colors of the feathers of the birds seen in their cages, at the Bird and Flower Market in Nanning. There was no means of knowing which of the many types of finches the caged finches belonged to, but the black and red feathers made them look very attractive. These finches were certainly good singers and would have made good pet birds to have at home. Usually in the Bird Markets, the number of birds in a cage is much higher than the number most suitable for them. Even small finch birds need space to fly about, the open spaces being their natural habitat. The bullfinches seen in the gardens have the freedom to fly wherever they wish to go. The finches in the cages may have all the protection, all the food and water, they may need, but not all the cages are large enough for them to fly about at will.

* *

*** The true finches are passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. These mainly seed-eating songbirds are found mainly in the Southern Hemisphere, with one subfamily endemic to the Neotropics, one to the Hawaiian Islands, and one subfamily, monotypic, at genus level, found only in the Palaearctic. The scientific name Fringillidae comes from the Latin word fringilla for the Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), a member of that last subfamily, which is common in Europe. There are many birds in other families that are also called "finches". They are generally Passeroidea and thus not too distantly related to true finches. These "other" finches include many species in the very similar-looking waxbills (family Estrildidae) which occur in the Old World tropics and Australia, and several groups of the bunting and American sparrow family (Emberizidae) are also named as finches, as are Darwin's finches of the Galapagos islands, which provided evidence of natural selection and are now recognized to be peculiar tanagers (Thraupidae).
SRC: Wikipedia.Org ***