My Birds of Nepal

This is Axel again. Since I got here to Nepal, I discovered that one of my staff has a love for birds like I do. He hooked me up with some Indian Muslim carpenters that built me two bird cages.

This one is for my pheasants. One side has a male and female silver pheasant and the other a male silver and male golden. All are juvies still and very common on the pet trade here.

This is the young silvers in my cage.

This is what the male silvers will look like when they become mature. I think I am about 6 months away from this..

Here is what the golden will look like mature. Yeah, they are THAT COOL!!! I swear, when you see them in real life you could never deny there is a God and that He is the greatest artist.

They are in the back of the front yard and you can see them when you come through the gate.

I have to change the screen on the one side to chicken wire.

The other cage is a finch cage. It is in my first Zen garden. You can sit on the ying and yang grass and look at them.

I have zebra and Bangladeshi finches and two local yellow weavers.

A Nepali Weaver and a Bengali finch.

My prizes in the finch cage are a pair of Javan Finches from Indonesia. I love these guys. They dominate the whole cage and have a really nice sound.

Here is a better picture of what they look like - their color looks like it was airbrushed on.

However, I still have some wants. Nepal has tons of other birds I would LOVE to get my hands on.

A red billed magpie. Smart and beautiful

A green jungle pigeon. The only kind of pigeon in the world that shouldn't be shot on sight.

White breasted kingfisher. These guys are everywhere and the blue on them is electric. The only problem would be feeding them.

Same issue with the Indian Roller - they eat insects so can't keep them but when they fly you would not believe how beautiful the blues are.

A Red Jungle Fowl. It is a very nice pheasant. OK, it looks like a chicken, because it is! All chickens in the world are in the pheasant family and originated from this guy whose ancestors come from Nepal. That is right, if you had chicken tonight you had Nepal's most successful export ever. I really like them in their original form. I had one but it died. I am getting another one as soon as I build a chicken coop.

This guy is another common kind here and my friend is giving me his after his babies hatch and live for a month or so.

Another native species of pheasant is the Kalij (which strangely enough means 'The Gulf - Persian' in Arabic). They have them here and I am going to get one later this year when they get some bigger birds.

Satyrs' Tragopan is also indigenous to Nepal. They have one at the zoo, but I don't think they ever make it to the pet trade. If I find one I will snap it up and build him his own cage. I'd love to breed some for re-release into the wild.

But the ultimate is the national bird of Nepal:

The Himalayan Monal. I LOVE these guys, but they are scarce. You can probably get these in the US. Here you just can't. But look how beautiful they are:

As bright as they are in this picture, they are even more impressive in real life. They are just too beautiful of a bird to even chance going extinct.

Some day, somewhere I am going to get one of these. It is high on my life list of things to do...