Stefan Verhoeven

Above I was talking about the male of the last picture. The other youngster is a bc Isabel grey female

This is an Isabel grey (also full bc and split bb) male. Isabel inherits recessive, so both parents are split Isabel.

That's a shame Pete! Nice birds in type/shape, but also quiet good in color. I have 2 nice females for them

The female is indeed a dark silver hen. The male seems to be a silver lightback grey. Silver you can see by the tail markings, they are not black-white, but (from top to bottom) black-greyish-white. Sometimes a silver grey male split cfw or lightback can be a little bit like a silver lightback, but in this cases you see still a bit of cream color in the feathers around the legs. All silver lightbacks (all lightbacks and CFW in general if they aren't blackface) have a totally white belly.

I don't have this color anymore, but in the line I have, and I see it in most other lines, I could tell difference between BBBC without black in the cheek and 'normal' BB females. When you take a close look at a BB female, most off the time the color of the cheek (normally grey in BB grey females) continues to the end off where normally the tearmark is. It seems to be that the tearmark color is replaced from the normal black markings to the grey color the cheek has. In most of te BBBC females the grey does not continue op to replacing the tearmark. It seems to be that de tearmark is gone and replaced by the color of the triangle between eye, beak and tearmark. So summing up: BBBC females, the black tearmark is replaced by white, in BB females the black tearmark is replaced by grey. But to make in difficult, BB split BC females tends to be more showing like a BBBC than a BB female, so they also start to be a loss of the tearmark and replacing it for a white color. Again, this was the general rule in my line, but it is not a 100% guarantee! The lacing of the flying feathers in the wing (primairy and secondary, and sometimes even the coverts) can be laced. In females it is rare to have lacing, but I think 25% has a lacing, and from that 25%, 20 has normally only a white lacing. I couldn't tell the difference between BBBC and BB females by the lacing of the white. But in about 5% of the cases you can see white with orange lacing in BB females and white with black lacing in BBBC females. Especially the last one is sometimes hard to see because you are looking for a very smal black line in almost totally grey feather. I know for sure that the female on the second picture had some black lacing in the secondaries, but it is not visual on the photo's.

All of those females are NOT blackface. @ Trevor: your right that most of the BBBC males don't have extended cheek patches. Some even have no black cheek patches at all and showing only white and grey. There are a few BBBC males with a little amount of extended cheek patches, but it is always less than that of a good BB male. In combination with BF it's a little bit easier to let the cheekpatches extend. I used to select the BC and BF birds that I used for the BBBC(BF) breeding on too much zebra markings around the cheek patches, it's a big fault in BF and BC show birds, bit ideal if you want to have at least some black around the cheek patches.

The difference between a BB and a BBBC female is most of the time not visual. In most of the BBBC breeding lines, the females show NO black cheek patches. Sometimes those females show a litte amount of black in de feathers of the flank or a litte black in the cheek, but most of the time you only know for sure if a female is BBBC by her parents. Some (I've seen only 5 of those) BBBC females do show black cheek patches. Here is a picture of 1 I had, at that moment an unique bird! And some pictures of females with a litte black in the cheek. But keep in mind normally you cannot recognize the difference between BB and BBBC females!

Thank you all for your messages! @ Dave Huntington: Zoetermeer is about 100 miles away from my home

Hello to you all! I'm Stefan Verhoeven, 31 years old and living in the south of the Netherlands (so in advance: sorry for my English I'm not a native English speaking person, so hopefully you can understand everything I say). I've visited the UK twice in the last 6 years to see some of the famous 'English zebrafinches' at shows and at the aviary of some breeders. And off course had a pint or 2 with some of you At the moment I am breeding the following mutations: - Fawn - Cream - Silver lightback grey - Orangebreasted blackbreasted (blackface) grey - Orangebreasted blackbreasted (blackface) isabel grey Here are some pictures of my birds :