Focus on African Finches: Avicultural Notes On The Grosbeak weaver

Abstract

The Ploceidgenus Amblyospizacoti as a single species, A albi/rrms, divided into 10 subspecies (Moreau & Greenway, 1962) distributed over a vast portion of Sub-Saharan Africa, from Sierra Leone south to Angola on the Atlantic coast, across central Africa, the southern Sudan to Ethiopia, and along the Indian Ocean coast, from Kenya to the Cape. Because this range includes the West African republic of Ghana, which listed all of its seed-eating birds on CITES Appendix III in 1976, this species has been prohibited from import to the United States since October 22, 1993, under the provision of the 1992 Wild Bird Conservation Act There are currently none in American zoos, the last being a male at the Pittsburgh Conservatory Aviary that arrived in 1987 and died in 1990, and a pair at San Antonio that died in 1988, having been there at least since 1982 (International Species Information System, 1983-1990). Perhaps some remain in private hands. It is largely in this hope that I present the following. However, the Wild Bird Conservation Act includes provisions for issuing permits "for importation of specimens of otherwise prohibited species for ... Zoological breeding or display programs" (U.S. Department of the Interior, 1992), though, so far as I know, none have yet been granted. With such a permit, an American Zoo might be able to obtain Amblyospiza through an exchange with a South African Zoo. Then perhaps a success achieved more than 60 years ago might be repeated.

The only hatching of Amblyospiza listed by the International Zoo Yearbook occurred at the World of Birds in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1985, when two were reared (Zoological Society of London, 1987). Aside from this I am aware of only one other place where captive breedings took placeThe remarkable collection of William Shore-Baily, in England.

Writing on the occasion of Mr. Shore-Baily's death on August 24, 1932, David Seth-Smith, Curator of Mammals and Birds at the London Zoo (and the much-beloved "Zoo Man" of the B.B.C.) wrote: "In 1910 he commenced keeping birds in captivity and he joined the Aviculrural Society in 1920. His large garden at Westbury was well-suited for the construction of aviaries of the kind he specially liked-very large wired-in enclosures through which streams flowed and vegetation grew luxuriantly and where his birds would be in practically a state of nature. Several such aviaries were built and their success is proved by the fact that he was awarded no less than thirty-six medals for breeding foreign birds for the first time in the United Kingdom. At one time he had nearly a thousand birds in outdoor aviaries ... " (SethSmith, 1932).

What Mr. Seth-Smith did not mention was that the entire place stankor so Jean Delacour told Arthur Douglas. Mr. Shore-Baily made his money as a tanner-and the tannery was next door.

Mr. Shore-Baily wrote three consecutive accounts of his experiences with Amblyospiza . which are the only firsthand accounts of this species' aviculture I am aware of.

"When I first saw this extraordinary bird I took it to be some kind of a Grosbeak, and a Weaver is the very last species to which I should have attributed it ... It is a large bird, and its immense Parrot-like beak makes it look still larger ... Adult male: general colour above, chocolate brown ... forehead white, underparts dark ashy grey ... Hen, above rufous brown, mottled with dark brown centres to the feathers; throat and underparts ... white, streaked with dusky brown ... A small consignment of these birds came over last Autumn-a first importation-from which I secured a cock and two hens. On turning them into my birdroom for the winter, I became...