Canaries
Only the males sing, and they were bred for that song over four hundred years. A canary is a bird to listen to rather than one to handle.
Photo by NEWSchr, CC BY-SA 4.0
Overview
The canary was domesticated in the early fifteenth century, when European sailors brought the grey green wild birds back from the Canary Islands and Madeira. The yellow that everyone pictures did not become characteristic until the later seventeenth century, and it was bred for.
The breeding split by country. The Harz Mountains in Germany worked on song, producing the roller lines. The Low Countries and Britain worked on shape and posture, producing the show breeds. Six hundred years on, buying a canary still means choosing between those two projects.
Temperament
Self contained and not a handling bird. A canary is enjoyed by ear and by eye, and it does not want to sit on a finger.
Males sing and females seldom do, which is the single fact that matters most when buying, because a canary bought for its song has to be a male. Males also do not tolerate each other in a small cage and will fight, so they are kept individually or in an aviary with room to get away from one another.
Care and grooming
A quality canary seed mix with greens, egg food during moult and breeding, and cuttlebone for calcium. Canaries are among the birds where a good seed mix is closer to adequate than it is for a parrot, though a formulated base still improves on it.
The annual moult is the event of the canary year. Males stop singing during it, which alarms new keepers every time, and the song returns when the moult finishes. Extra protein through those weeks makes the difference to how the new feathers come in.
Living and exercise
A cage of at least 24 by 16 by 18 inches, and width is the dimension that counts, because a canary flies from perch to perch rather than climbing. Perches at both ends and nothing in the middle of the flight path.
They are sensitive to draughts and to fumes, and the old phrase about a canary in a coal mine describes a real physiological fact: a bird's respiratory system extracts more from each breath than a mammal's does, including whatever is wrong with the air.
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