MY GOULDIAN AVIARY | Swift Heath Gardens

Welcome to My Gouldian Aviary

I hope you enjoy this little story of our garden aviary and find it of some benefit in your quest to successfully house this truly glorious Australian Gouldian grass finch!

Paul Walker

Hobby Aviculturist & Photographer

Hello and welcome to this website. My name is Paul Walker, and I have been keeping Gouldian finches since 1995.

I first published the My Gouldian Aviary website (formerly www.mygouldianaviary.com) in December 1999 to share my experiences and photographs of housing the Gouldian Finch.

The Gouldian finches are kept in a large, landscaped garden aviary. Over time I have added other small compatible species such as Double Bars, Star Finches, Emblema's, Cubans, African Gold Breast waxbills/Fire finches and Cordon Bleu's.

Over the decades a strong strain of free breeding colony raised Gouldian finches has evolved that are all descended from 4 Gouldian finches that I purchased in January of 1995.

All the Gouldian's are known by name, and most are named after Greek Gods. The Gouldian colony all descend from a red headed Gouldian male named Montezuma.

All the photographs displayed are of our aviary finches. If you would like access to any photograph for a school project, magazine, newsletter article or other publication, please contact us and we will be happy to supply the original size photograph.

Prometheus

Our First Gouldian

In February 1995 I purchased my very first pairs of Gouldian finches. A pair of red heads and a pair of black heads.

Only the red head pair of Gouldian finches survived. I named them Montezuma and Arethusa, and their bloodlines live on in the aviary colony today.

It has been an incredible feat, given my complete lack of experience in housing this specialist finch in the unpredictable Melbourne weather in those early days.

Habitat

The Gouldian finch is originally from the grass lands of the Kimberley's and along the Northern top stretch of Australia.

The temperatures and seasons at the top end of Australia are very different to the weather in South Gippsland but our colony have adapted over the years evolving into a strong strain.