Canary

Canary battle analysis

The canary began as a small, streaky green-yellow finch in the laurel forests, pine woods and gardens of the Atlantic islands. Sailors and colonists brought it to Europe, where its song made it a treasured pet by the 1600s. Breeders then shaped it into hundreds of forms: bright yellow and red birds, crested and frilled birds, and song breeds trained to roll, bubble or ring.

Its voice is the canary's real specialty. A male learns his song over most of his first year, building 30–40 syllable types on an inborn framework, and uses both sides of his voice box independently to produce rapid two-note syllables that females find especially attractive. Rival males hold song duels, overlapping and stretching their songs. Research on canary brains showed that adult birds keep adding neurons to their song-control centre, changing how scientists think about the adult brain.

In an absolute matchup the canary has almost nothing to fight with. It weighs about 20 g, its bill is built for seeds, and it is so sensitive to toxic air that it served for nearly a century as a living gas alarm. Its survival strategy is to hide, flock and fly.

Habitat & range

The wild Atlantic canary is found only in Macaronesia in the eastern Atlantic: the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. It lives in a wide variety of habitats from pine and laurel forests to sand dunes, most commonly in semi-open areas with small trees such as orchards and copses, and in parks and gardens, from sea level to above 1,500 m in the Canary Islands (Wikipedia). It has been introduced to Midway Atoll (since 1911); a Bermuda population founded in 1930 died out by the 1960s.

Diet & hunting

It feeds in flocks on the ground or in low vegetation, mainly on seeds of weeds and grasses and on figs, plus other plant material and small insects (Wikipedia). Domestic canaries eat seed mixes plus greens, egg food and calcium sources.

Social life

Gregarious; wild canaries often nest in loose groups, each pair defending a small territory. Domestic canaries can live in aviary groups outside the breeding season, where a hierarchy forms and fights become rare.

Conservation

The Atlantic canary is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN. Populations are estimated at 80,000–90,000 pairs in the Canary Islands, 30,000–60,000 pairs in the Azores and 4,000–5,000 pairs in Madeira. The domestic canary is one of the most widely kept cage birds in the world.

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