Origin: Australia

These birds just love to build.  They spend almost all of their time building nests.  Once a nest is perfect they move on to a new nest and start again from scratch.

When not nest building the male likes to show how manly he is with a display of "bobbing".  Sometimes with a twig or feather in his beak and often without any props.  He does not seem to need an audience as the female shows no interest in these displays.

Both the male and female become quite territorial in the evenings just at sundown.  They chase away all smaller birds from the area in front of their nest.  I have often seen them pecking a juvenile zebra finch or waxbill quite aggressively until the fledgling leaves. 

These small finches are the most active birds in our aviary.  They seldom stay still for more than a few moments and they move very quickly.  Cuban finches are very brave and will stand their ground against any of the other birds no matter how big the bird might be.

Cuban finches seem to believe that when building a nest it is very important to steal a good proportion of the required nest building materials from other (bigger) birds nests.  Even when there is a convenient supply of grass, feathers and coconut fibers on hand it is important to enter other birds nests and remove beakfuls of nesting materials.

These birds are quite shy and although they seem to be constantly darting around the aviary and not to be nesting they still manage to produce chicks which suddenly appear in the aviary.