Hi Danielle,
It’s natural for them to use the highest place for a nest. The problem with trying to make any changes now is that they are likely to abandon the eggs or any chicks. Hopefully they will not fall out of the box. You can try to pad the cage under them, but even that could upset the parents enough to abandon the nest. If the chicks do fall out, you can put them back in the nest.
I know this wasn’t planned, but when you have breeding birds, you need to provide a good diet and some extra foods. If they are just on a seed diet, this is not going to provide the nutrition they need. They need a nutritionally balanced diet like a finch pellet or granule. Seed mixes provide very little nutrition. You can’t change their diet now, but you can offer other foods. I would start offering a pelleted diet. Also offer dark leafy greens and chopped veggies. While they are breeding and have eggs or chicks, they need an egg food – there are commercial egg foods but you can just offer a cooked egg, with the shell washed, crushed and cooked with the egg. Offer this every day. The female needs extra protein and calcium to replace what she lost when forming the eggs. She can also feed this to the chicks. It’s important to rest a pair from breeding in between clutches. In the wild, a finch pair will have one or maybe two clutches per year, during breeding season. In captivity, they will do this year round, but it is not good for their health. Once these chicks leave the nest, or if the eggs don’t hatch, take the box down right away, or the parents will start laying eggs again before they even wean the chicks. If they do this, some pairs fail to wean the chicks and the chicks will starve to death. I know this is a food bowl, but it needs to be take down. You should replace any bowls they can sit in with smaller cups. Do not give them anything else they can use as a nest. Rest them for several months, and then give them the right kind of nest and hand it high where they nested before. You need to do this each time they lay eggs or hatch chicks. It’s best to limit them to two clutches per year.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
