Kept for its song
The male sings long, rolling songs. People have bred canaries for their voices for five hundred years.
Garden and aviary · A little time each day
Canary
Finch · from the Canary Islands
A small, slim, bright yellow finch with a pale beak and a neatly forked tail.
- Size
- About 12cm long
- Lives for
- 8 to 12 years
- Suits
- People who want song, not a bird to handle
Flits after you from perch to perch. Move your pointer and see.
Good to know
Six things about the canary
The islands came first
The bird is named after the Canary Islands. The islands are named after dogs.
The miner's friend
Miners carried canaries underground until 1986. The bird reacted to poisonous gas before the men could feel it.
Greenish in the wild
Wild canaries are a dull yellow-green. The bright yellow was bred in.
You can turn one red
Some canaries turn orange-red if fed foods rich in certain pigments.
Silent in summer
He stops singing for a few weeks each summer while he grows new feathers.
The real thing
Photos of the canary
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
Looking after one
Give it a long cage, so that it can fly from end to end, with canary seed, greens, a cuttlefish bone and a bath. Keep it out of draughts.
Before you get one
A canary asks for very little and does not need handling. Only the males sing.
Keep going