The morning dawned overcast. This shoot was to be inside a heavilly planted aviary, so flash illumination was preferred, as long as it didn't overly disturb the stars of this shoot - the beautiful Australian Gouldian Finch. The Gouldian is also known as the painted finch, or the rainbow finch. Mother nature really excelled herself here. The colours you see are not re-touched, or created through human intervention or breeding. These are the naturally occuring colours of what has to be the most colourful and popular aviary finch alive in the world today.

These beautiful little flying rainbows are native to the Northern parts of Australia. They breed prolifically when the grasses seed and ripen. The young spend up to their first year in dull grey olive plumage, moulting to their adult plumage over 1 to 6 months depending on prevailing seasonal conditions. If you look closely at the birds in this panorama, you may identify the youngsters in dull olive/grey, adult females with slightly watered down colours and the brilliantly coloured males. Three head colour variations occur naturally - black, red and orange - although only two are captured here - the red head and the black head.

The Gouldian finch is endangered in the wild from habitat loss and a widespread parasitic air sack mite infection. They are, however, quite secure in aviculture where their beautiful colouring, bold, endearing nature and (under the right conditions) ease of breeding will save them from extinction.

Notes to the sound track:

• The social calls of the gouldian finches are a fairly short "tweet-tweet" - heard at the start of the recording, and again at the end. If you listen carefully, the soft "whurring" near the start of the recording is a bird flying past the recorder. The courting song of the gouldian (unfortunately not captured here) includes sounds so high pitched they are outside the normal range of human hearing.
• A gravelly "chrrrrrrrrr" "chrrrrrrrr" followed by the almost piercing, mournful cries, are the King Quail calling out to each other.
• The rather melodious series of "churrups" at the end of the soundtrack is a wild thrush, startled out of cover in the trees above.
• The background babble is not recorder noise - it's over 100 budgergiars trying to out-do each other in an adjacent aviary.