Vik's Gallery:   Zebra Finch (8/10)

PASSERIFORMES: Estrildidae

Taeniopygia guttata  

Zebra Finches are easily the most numerous bird we have seen in Central Australia. Their presence indicates that there is water not too far away.

These Zebra Finches are at Willie Rockhole, near the Northern Territory-Western Australian border, where amazingly, just fifty years ago in 1963, Pintubi Aborigines were found still living in the tough and precarious conditions that their ancestors have survived for thousands of years.

*Douglas, Lockwood (1964). The Lizard Eaters. Cassell Australia, p.27ff.