Oh so lovely photographs ! Good to see - my birds still have a clear, colourless/greyish beak, and rosy legs and toes, with little dark or blueish. They are obviously young.
They are not very expensive (25 - 30 € each bird), but where I live they are not easy to get. Colourful gouldians or parrot finches are easier. On the mainland this is no problem. In Italy just ended a big ornithological fair at Emilia Romagna, my birds are from there.
Though I 'decorated' the cage/aviary with twigs and leaves from australian species (eucalyptus, casuarina, etc.) the birds obviously don't care. They seem to come from a breeding module without any natural interior. They had to adapt to the branches and twigs (they prefer the ones with quite small diameter - not the big perches), have learned to fly right now, took four days to touch the bottom - grasses, soil, etc. and still did not bath, but recognized the white plastic drinking dispenser at once! The fresh millet sprays are untouched - they don't recognize them as food.
But I am happy that the begun to drink and eat immediately, they love germinated seeds and begin to behave as birds with some space should. They interact in a lovely way, tweeting and meowing and yes, the male singing is like a child’s machine gun! At least it should be, for my male bichenov still tries hard and all he can is a confused but very pleasing murmuring.