ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 96, © 2004
No reprints without permission

Celebrate our 100th issue of Flock Talk with us! Beginning July 16th, we will feature a very special series of stories, written by you. From now until Sept 15, enter your story and become eligible to win one of a series of great prize packages worth $65 to $140!

Our special hand-numbered-and-signed edition of Robirda's book Brats in Feathers, Keeping Canaries has been getting a great response from readers. Here's just a few of the comments we've received;

"You have a way of making things easy to understand, and I love the look and feel of your book - not to mention that it is so easy to find the information I am looking for. THANK YOU!!!"

"It's SO beautiful, and the photos and illustrations are wonderful, I love it!!!!!! Thanks so much!!!"

"Received your book today, and was surprised how great it is! It's well worth the cost and then some, thank you!"

Learn more about Robirda's book here.

Try Robirda's ebooks for all the quality at a fraction of the price!

It's here! The new, updated, easy-to- get-around website for the Bird & Cage Co is up and running! The folks at Bird & Cage aim to provide birdkeepers with a great selection of good quality cages and birdcage accessories for great prices, and their new website shows it for all the world to see. Take a tour anytime, by visiting birdandcage.com

It's almost time for the annual moult, and that means this is the time to be sure you have all the accessories you will need on hand. See our list of some of the cage accessories Robirda recommends at robirda.com/access.html

There are some great cage deals available too, including some of the best flight cages you will find anywhere. See Robirda's birdcage reviews at robirda.com/birdcage.html

Our CD of Robirda's canaries singing consists of 12 16-bit true-stereo tracks, each averaging almost 5 minutes long, for a total of 58 minutes and 48 seconds of canary songs. You can hear a 10 second mp3 sample here. Listen carefully, and you will be able to hear the different positions of each bird!

We are now offering New Songs From The Birdroom for only $12.00, plus $2.99 shipping and handling. Order yours today!

Get an insider's look into careers and businesses involving pet birds. The Companion Bird Lover's Guide to Careers offers insights into a selection of avian-related careers & businesses, including avian rescue founder and director, avian veterinarian, veterinarian technician, freelance writer, marketing manager, & bird boarding entrepreneur, as well as selling wares to the companion bird market.

This informative booklet provides profiles of people who have careers and businesses involving pet birds; dozens of helpful resources to help put you on your chosen career track; & vital information to help you make informed decisions on necessary qualifications & other considerations.

For more infomation (including how to order on or offline), and to read free articles, please visit P J Publications.

Welcome to Robirda's Companion Birds eZine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

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Table of Contents

Feature Article

Keeping canaries can be confusing even for those of us who have had canaries in our care and in our houses for years. How much more confusing is it, then, to be new to the world of canaries, and trying to make some sense of all of it?

Here is one Flock Talk reader's solution; a 'cheat sheet' that lists a few of the more basic traits, breeds, and colours. She uses this list as a quick reference to keep herself from getting too confused, and also to offer a place to start when looking for more details.

While not complete (what list ever is?), this list does include many essential canary basics, and can offer you a good place to start when beginning your own canary research.

by Terry Leighton
Maryland, USA
Copyright © May 2004

Canary Song Breeds:
          Waterslager, American Singer, Roller, Timbrado, Russian. Song breeds are bred strictly for a specific style of song. Each breed has its own unique 'trademark' sounds.

Canary Type Breeds:
          Border, Fife, Frilled (French, Dutch, Italian, Scotch), Gloster, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Stafford, Norwich, Lizard. Type canaries are bred strictly for their appearance; quality of song is not considered. Most male type canaries can and do sing quite willingly, some of them quite well. Of course, none sing as cultured a song as will a canary from one of the song breeds.

Some Common Canary Terms

Lipochrome (or Ground Color):
          This is the underlying feather color. Ground colors can be yellow, ivory, white, red, or rose. Yellow and red are considered normal colors, while White, Ivory and Rose are lipochrome-color mutations. White occurs in two forms: one is dominant (showing faint yellow in the butts of the wings), while the other is recessive, showing pure white feathers and bluish tones to the skin. Ivory and Rose are gender-linked recessive mutations.

Variegation:
          This is the streaks, stripes, or patches of dark color that can show up on some canaries, involving any combination of brown, black, or gray melanins masking some or all of the ground colors in the feather.

Self:
          This is a bird with all dark feathers, with melanin showing in every feather. The ground color may be hard to tell, but can be any color. The underflue (fluffy feathers near the skin) is dark grey.

Ticked:
          One to three small dark markings showing, none larger than a dime - the bird otherwise shows no melanin.

Grizzled:
          Faint variegation alternating light and dark in the feather, giving a lighter or 'grizzled' look when compared to fully expressed varigation. Grizzle markings may disappear as the bird ages.

Three-Quarters Dark:
          A dark canary of any ground color with white or light feathering in the flanks and vent area.

Foul:
          A dark canary with a very few light feathers showing (often in the wing or tail).

Clear:
          A canary showing no melanins in the feather; can be any ground color. Even the faintest showing of small ticks of dark color mean that the bird is considered ticked, varigated, or grizzled, rather than clear.

Red Factor:
          The gene that allows a molting canary's body to absorb the naturally-occurring red colors in his food and show them in his feathers.

Red Colorants:
          Canthaxanthin (concentrated tropical food carotenoids) or foods high in tropical or temperate-region carotenoids such as paprika, red pepper, or carrots.

Some Common Canary Colors (except yellow)

Bronze:
          A red-ground canary with a complete complement of melanin showing in all the feathers.

Green:
          A yellow ground canary with a complete complement of melanins.

Blue:
          A white ground canary with a complete complement of melanins.

Brown (or Cinnamon):
          Can occur in any ground color. A gender-linked recessive mutation that suppresses the black melanins and allows only brown melanins to show. The eyes of a young chick are noticably red, rather than the more normal black-brown. When adult, the eyes appear dark, but in good light it can be seen that they are actually a very dark red.

Fawn:
          A white-ground canary showing the Brown (or cinnamon) melanin mutation.

Agate:
          A gender-linked recessive mutation of the melanin which suppresses all the brown, allowing only black and grey melanins to show. This gives an overall almost silvery cast to the bird. Can occur in any ground color.

Isabel:
          A recessive mutation of melanins combining the traits of the cinnamon and agate mutations, allowing only very faint diluted markings to appear in the feathers. The eyes are dark red.

Satinette:
          A recessive melanin mutation showing very faint silvery striations. Satinettes have bright ruby-red eyes.

Pastel:
          A mutation of the melanin colors that dilutes the strength and intensity of the way the melanin appears.

Lizard:
          This is one of the oldest-occurring mutations in the canary world, and is fully recessive, belonging to a single breed of type canaries known as 'Lizards'. It reverses the way the melanins appear on the feather, allowing them to give each feather a 'spangled' or 'scaley' appearance.

Some Feather Facts

Feather type can be a very confusing subject, however, each feather type has its own distinctive shape and traits. It is best when attempting to discern feather type, to pull a small feather from the chest area of the bird in question, and place the feather onto a sheet of paper of contrasting color. When this is done, the differences between the different types of feather can usually be seen quite clearly.

Song breeds may have intermediate feathers with no clear distinctive feather type. No matter what the feather type, each feathers will have varying amounts of small fluffy bits near the bottom of the feather, where the feather shaft emerged from the skin.

These fluffy bits are the 'underflue'. They are white on a clear bird of any ground color. The underflue rarely shows any color at all save on melanistic birds, where, depending on the mutations present, the underflue will range from beige or tan to the more commonly seen dark grey.

Non-intensive feathering:
          Birds with this type of feather are sometimes known as 'Buff', 'Frosted' or 'Soft-feathered' canaries. These feathers are quite broad, and are smoothly rounded. The feather structure is quite loose, with plenty of underflue feathering, and usually the color is concentrated only in the center of the feather, fading towards the edges to show a white edge all around.

Some soft-feathered canaries (sometimes known as 'High Buff') will have some or all feathers that show color all the way to the edges of the feather. But when looked at carefully against a piece of paper of contrasting color, as mentioned above, it will be noted that the shape of the feather clearly marks the feather as non-intensive, rather than intensive.

Intensive feathering:
          Birds with this type of feathering are also sometimes called 'Hard-feathered'. An older term, 'Yellow', is sometimes used too; this term is not to be confused with the color! It is less used nowadays, but will still sometimes be heard.

An intensive feather is narrower overall than its non-intensive counterpart. Rather than being smoothly rounded, the ends are narrower, and the feather shows a distinct tip with a slightly rounded point. The overall texture is more refractive, giving it a 'harder' look, and generally the ground color is distributed evenly thoughout the entire feather, except the underflue.

Dimorphic (or 'mosaic') feathering:
          This is a fully recessive mutation of feather type. A feather pulled from the chest area of the bird and looked at against paper of contrasting color shows that these feathers have copious amounts of underflue, and their color is concentrated in the center of the feather. The feather itself looks similar to a non-intensive feather, but is much broader, and the feather structure is looser, showing much more white along the broad outside edges.

On the bird, the white areas of the feathers overlap and mask most of the color, meaning that the birds appear visually to be white, with vivid color points showing where the feathers are thinner. Specifically, color is seen in a bright mask around the eyes in the males, and in both genders on the shoulder butts and rump. This interesting trait means that this breed of canary is so far the only breed that allows for gender differentiation by visual inspection alone.

Other Oddities

The Crest mutation:
          Crested canaries have been around for a long time, and crests can be seen in many breeds. The most commonly seen crested canary is the breed called 'Gloster'.

There are two kinds of birds in any crested breed; a crested bird, and a non-crested bird. These are bred together to produce an average of 50% crested youngsters and 50%#37; non-crested youngsters. The plain-headed member of the pair is bred for a specially shaped head that will help their crested youngsters to display the crest properly.

Each crested breed has special terms for its crested and non-crested members. In Glosters, the crested birds are 'Coronas', while the plainheaded birds are 'Consorts'. In the Lancashire breed the term 'Coppy' is used for the crested, while the Hartz canary has 'Topknots'.

Perhaps the oldest crested breed of all is the one known as 'Crested'. These are ancient relatives to the Norwich breed, and the two types are known simply as 'Crested' and 'Crestbred'.

The Lethal Factor:
          This is a genetic factor that becomes involved when breeding two dominant mutations of the same type together. Theoretically, when involved the lethal factor will cause 25% of the offspring to become non-viable, dying either while still in the egg, or shortly after hatching.

Two of the more common mutations that can involve the lethal factor are the crested and the dominant white mutations. This potential problem with the lethal factor is why most breeders will advise never to breed a dominant white canary to another dominant white, and similarly, why a crested canary should be bred to a plainhead, rather than another crested canary.

Use of this 'cheat sheet' has helped me to keep confusion at bay many a time. I intend to continue to add items to it as I learn, and gain more definitions, and I hope you will too find it as useful to you as it has for me, helping to enhance our enjoyment of and appreciation for this complex and wonderful little feathered creature known as 'The Canary'.

by Terry Leighton
Maryland, USA
Copyright © May 2004