Here is my attempt too explain longflights

There are Primary flights and Secondary flights

In a Show bird the primary flights are supposed to touch together at the top of the tail feather . Longer than this point then the bird would be deemed to have long flights and shorter than this point than the bird would have short flights.

The secondary filghts are the feathers in the wing that come after the 7th or 8th flight feather ( counting from the outside in ) , the secondary flights are supposed to meet together at the top of the rump and therefore leaving what is termed in the show side as the shield , which is basically the ground colour of the bird that shows between the flights on the rump .

This first picture is of two young birds 3 months old , notice the difference between them in the wing.

And this bird also 3 months old would be classed as normal wings.

Now you should see the difference between them , But for a close up I took these two photos .

A Normal wing (Above)

This is a longflight (Above)

As you can see there is a huge difference the normal birds wing is about 110mm from the top of the wing and the longflight is about 130mm from the top of the wing .

The parents both have normal wings and there were 3 other brothers and sisters to the longflight all having normal flights .

That's very interesting - the difference in length is striking - I have never thought about flight length before, but from now on i will be looking at how long (or short) my birds flights are. Thanks for sharing.

 

I bet its the birds with long flights that can still fly high after a full wing clip

Yeah interesting!

Long flight birds were dominate. Looks like there is still a bit of it still floating around the gene pool!

The typical had a bump at the back of the neck near the rump.

I think I have posted this picture before. One of my old grey green opalines.

Might be related lonebudgie?

Edited June 28, 200817 yr by throwback

I bought some birds from a guy at Sawtel in 2002 when I started back into show budgies , alot of his birds had the long flights and he showed me what too look for and it was something he was culling out , I didnt realise till later when Gary Gazzard pointed it out to me at our club that I should be breeding Longflight birds to short flight birds otherwise I would loose the entire outline of the birds , I really had to go backwards to go fowards , if only there were more profile breeders that helped the novices out when looking at your birds , but then that is the apprenticeship or the learning errors we make , I still have longflight birds , but now im very selsctive who I put them too or if I use them at all.

The east cost birds do have a reputation for awesome heads, but small in body.

 

Where the west coast guy's have good size in there birds but lack a little in top end.

Are you serious!

Look at those wings They are HUGE!!!!

 

all but 2 of my birds wings touch I didn't think that it would make a difference???

but crikey, they would fly far

I have some long flighted birds that I bred from some birds that I got from the Newcastle area. I thought it was just a fault & didn’t know it could be useful. So thanks for that advice

I have some long flighted birds that I bred from some birds that I got from the Newcastle area. I thought it was just a fault & didn’t know it could be useful. So thanks for that advice

The main thing to watch is the outline of the bird , With long flights you will not only get the big wings you seem to find lumps and bumps appearing in the outline of the bird

Well I have no Long wings But I am 99.9% sure that they don't have bumps I think that stripey the English skyblue sangle has on though Hmm i might check in the morning