As this site points out, being called a Bird Brain is a compliment! Here you will find research, news, anecdotes, pet and wild bird resources which will help reveal to you how intelligent birds really are. Sure, you already knew that your pet bird is smart - but did you realize he was this smart? Read the articles posted here and find out!

One thing I really like about this site (besides the user-friendly layout and the great content, that is), are the little quotes posted here and there, which give a glimpse into the kind of love and caring which is behind the creation of this site. This is a great place to not only learn about birds, but to also learn from them as well. If you are like me, you will want to add this site to your favourites list, and visit it often!

This is a useful little electrical device which uses a tiny electrical charge to negatively ionize the air around it. Think of the air after a heavy rainfall and you will have an idea of the effect. Negative ions don't like floating about on their own, and will actively seek out particles to attach themselves to. This makes any dust particles heavier than the air, which means that they will promptly settle to the nearest surface, where they can be easily cleaned up.

There is many sources for negative ionizers. They can often be found incorporated into air filters, as well as in stand-alone units, some of which are built to screw into a and empty light-bulb socket - these latter are particularly easy to use.

Feeding calcium to our birds is easy. Getting it to cross the gut wall into the bloodstream is quite difficult. As calcium deficiency is the biggest nutritional problem in bird keeping a solution to this dilemma is important.

CalciBoost provides pre-dissolved calcium in a highly bio-available form, ensuring maximum absorption.

For more information visit www.birds2grow.com

Welcome to the Companion Birds eZine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Hello!   Welcome to the 31st issue of Flock Talk!

If this ezine is helpful to you, please visit www.robirda.com/useful.html. Send any ideas, tips, tricks, stories, or comments here. Thanks for reading Flock Talk!

Robirda

Feature Article

"Pretty in Pink" has been a popular folk phrase for generations now, and for good reason, too. There's just something about this warm, yet cool, colour that soothes our too often stressed-out eyes. Its use is thought to emphasize femininity and sensitivity, while the colour itself is said to imply a pure, restrained, yet passionate nature. Interestingly enough, such people can sometimes be found breeding...

by R C McDonald
copyright © 2001.
*a version of this article was first published
in 1997 in the magazine 'Bird Breeder'.

Thought for years to be a fantasy, nothing more, in actuality the 'pink' - or 'rose' canary has been in existence for over 50 years.

The first documented rose canary appeared about 1950 or so. It was a mutation which affected the apparent visual depth of the normal colour of a red canary, making the plumage appear paler than the usual deep vermillion.

A Dutch canary breeder, P.J. Helder, found a youngster in what should have been a nest full of normal red canaries which had noticeably pale plumage compared to the other chicks. When this chick moulted into its adult feathers it became pink rather than the red colour expected of the rest of the clutch. As it turned out, this chick was a hen.

Test mating proved that she was a new mutation. It is the first colour mutation known to have occurred in a red line of canaries, rather than yellow, although it was eventually transferred to yellow canaries also. It was named the 'ivory' mutation, and became known as 'gold ivory' in yellow birds, which in turn led to it being termed 'rose ivory' in red canaries, to avoid any possible confusion. But that was still in the future.

The test matings also showed that the Rose Ivory mutation was a gender-linked recessive mutation - meaning that if a hen received the gene for this mutation from her father, she would show it, while her brother from the same nest, also receiving a rose gene from his father and a normal red gene from his mother, would appear to be a normal red canary, although, like his father, he would carry the gene for rose.

In other words, in order for a male canary to show the rose colour in his feathers, he must receive the rose gene from both parents. A male who receives the rose gene from only one parent will carry the gene in its unexpressed form, and will be able to pass it on to his offspring, but he will appear to be a normal coloured canary.

On the other hand, the hens are either rose or they are not. They cannot carry the colour in a unexpressed form, nor can they receive the rose gene from their mother, but as if in compensation for this, no matter what colour their mother is, they need only to receive the mutation from their father in order to show rose plumage, rather than red. This is what is meant by the term 'gender-linked recessive mutation'; all gender-linked recessive mutations are passed on in this manner.

Two of the more well-known melanin mutations are also gender-linked in nature, brown (or cinnamon), one of the oldest canary colour mutations, and agate. Although these colours are mutations of the melanins rather than the lipochromes, they are passed to a chick from its parents in exactly the same manner as is the rose mutation.

What all this adds up to, is that in order to produce 100% rose canaries, you must have a breeding pair in which both the male and the female are rose.

If you breed a rose male to a normal red female canary, you should expect to see 50% normal red males, all of whom will carry rose as a recessive, and 50% rose hens.

A normal red male bred to a rose hen will produce 50% visually red males, all of whom will carry rose, and 50% normal red hens.

A visually normal male who carries rose, when bred to a rose hen will produce 25% rose males, 25% visually normal males carrying rose, 25% rose hens, and 25% normal hens.

A visually normal male who carries rose, when bred to a normal hen will produce 25% normal red males, 25% visually normal males who carry rose, 25% rose hens, and 25% red hens. In this last pair the only way to separate the normal males from the rose carriers will be to test mate the chicks in the next breeding season.

Be careful when choosing your stock! The colour should be as deep and even as possible, not pale pastel pink, but a deep even rose. One useful quirk of the rose ivory mutation is that it ensures even distribution of the colour throughout the lipochrome.

This trait can be rather useful to breeders of lipochrome red who don't mind also breeding a few rose canaries; since rose ivory is a gender-linked recessive, a male canary can carry yet not show the colour, as stated above. A wise breeder can use this fact to his advantage.

A red lipochrome male carrying but not showing the rose gene will still have the benefit conferred by the rose ivory mutation of even distribution of colour throughout the lipochrome, although the mutation itself will not be visibly expressed. His colour therefor will appear to be a deep, remarkably even red.

Since one of the problems breeders of the red lines of canaries can have is achieving an even distribution of the lipochrome in the plumage, this trait can be a real bonus to a serious colour breeder.

Occasionally I have see a bird from a line of red canaries who shows the dominant white mutation, being called rose. This colour of canary is not officially recognized on the show bench, but can be bred, whether by accident or otherwise, and that existance can cause some confusion for those not expecting to find them.

Due to the white feathering overlaying the red ground colour, some can appear to be rather pink; but the colour points at the wing butts and above the root of the tail are more red than pink, brighter than the rest of the plumage.

This colour of canary can also sometimes be mistaken for dimorphic canaries (also called 'mosaic'), who can look similar; but a true dimorphic canary will show brighter colour points and, in the males, a facial mask. In the case of confusion, a test mating will always reveal the truth, as the dimorphic mutation of feathering is recessive, while dominant white is, as the name implies, dominant.

The overall effect lacks the trademark evenness of the colour seen in a true rose ivory. These identifying trademarks make it possible to discern between these similar looking birds without having to resort to the final arbiter, the breeding room.

The rose ground mosaic and the dominant white which hatches from a rose, rather than a red line, can be extremely difficult to tell apart when going solely on appearance. They are both extremely beautiful birds.

The visual effect is mainly white, with delicate pink colour points. The colour points will be faintly paler on the dominant white-rose bird (sometimes called 'silver rose') than on the dimporphic rose, but this can be difficult to differentiate unless you happen to have a bird of the right colour to compare to.

Another wonderful combination of mutations pairs the agate and the rose mutations. The agate bird has all of the brown removed from its melanin, leaving delicately penciled charcoal grey striations, while the feathers are edged in misty grey. This, over a deep pink lipochrome, produces an exquisitely stunning feast for the eyes. To have a bird that looks like this, with the beautiful warbling-style song of many of the Red Factor canaries, can seem almost dreamlike.

With all the exquisite colour combinations possible, it has always been surprising to me that more canary breeders have not added the rose lipochrome colour to their red stock. Some breeders out there, however, still believe that having the ivory mutation present in a line of red birds will reduce the depth of colour of the lipochrome in all of their stock, whether the ivory colour is expressed or not, in either yellow or red ground birds.

This is just not true. I believe that this fallacy arose from a misinterpretation of the effect of the ivory mutation on the ground colour of the bird which actually shows the colour.

Yes, many knowledgeable people have said that the ivory mutation reduces the ground colour of the canary, and they are right. What is not always clear is that this statement refers to the visible expression of this particular mutation only, not to the birds who just carry it, and most definitely not to the birds who may be related but do not have the ivory mutation.

So if you like a challenge, and red canaries are no longer enough to satisfy a taste for exotic colours, why not consider adding some rose birds to your line? You never know, soon you too may be singing the praises of these birds who are so pretty in pink!

by R C McDonald
copyright © 1997 - 2001. All rights reserved.
www.robirda.com

While it is true that horses, dogs, cats, and other animal species have been domesticated for far longer, it is also true that these species were tamed and kept for their usefulness and ability to help us achieve necessary tasks like hauling loads, hunting, or pest control, rather than the more abstract considerations behind the domestication of the canary, 500 years ago.

In effect, out of all the creatures we share our planet with, it took meeting a canary to make members of the human race sit up and say, "I don't care if it's useful, I like the way that little bird sounds, and I want one!"

"I have two canaries at home and they have just hatched 3 chicks. I was wanting to hand rear the chicks but I am unsure of the age when I should take them from the nest to do so."

My answer;

"Hello! Because they are not social by nature like most hookbills and many finches species, hand-raising canaries is not a guarantee you will get a tame canary as a result.

"It is quite difficult to do, too - even people who have been successful at hand-raising baby hookbills will find that hand-feeding canaries can be very tricky!

"Add in the fact that learning to successfully handraise a canary to adulthood will include a learning curve that too often sees a majority of the chicks dying until the necessary experience to attain adequate skill is acquired, and you will understand why handfeeding canaries is so rarely done.

"In fact, given the consideration that handfed canary youngsters will not necessarily be tame once they have fledged, usually this will only be done to rescue a youngster which would otherwise die.

"You will have a much greater chance of success at getting a tame canary if you start working with a youngster once it is out of the nest and just weaned, as described in the hand-taming article I have posted.

"Here's a link for you - happy taming, eh? Handtaming a Canary"

Our next issue is due out Nov 11th - until then, may you and your birds enjoy all the best of everything!

Robirda
October 28, 2001
Vancouver, BC, Canada