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Monday, October 20, 2025

Singing Canaries – Ornithology


I mentioned The Canary Chicken earlier; right here’s a bit extra.

Years in the past, singing canaries had been fashionable. A radio present within the 1940’s within the U.S. featured dozens of canaries singing together with classical data. There was additionally a canary music coaching file from Hartz Mountain you can use at residence to show your canary to sing. The recognition of canaries led unscrupulous pet store house owners to inject each female and male canaries with testosterone, the male hormone that induces singing (and different courtship conduct). After just a few weeks, nonetheless, the canary’s proprietor turned upset on the chook’s cessation of singing because the hormone wore off.

The custom of proudly owning canaries for his or her singing talents dates again centuries. The ancestor of domesticated canaries is the Atlantic canary (Serinus canaria), native to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa. These islands served as an necessary buying and selling hub through the Age of Exploration, starting within the 14th century. Sailors from Spain, Portugal, and England usually stopped on the Canary Islands throughout their journeys and had been intrigued by the melodious songs of untamed canaries, so that they started capturing these birds and bringing them again to Europe. Over time, European breeders acknowledged the potential of canaries as singers, selectively breeding them for particular traits such because the chook’s vocal vary, high quality, and readability of its music.

By the seventeenth century, canaries had turn into extremely wanted throughout Europe. The birds had been significantly favored in international locations akin to England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Canaries gained immense reputation among the many higher lessons and elites, main ealthy people, aristocrats, and royal courts to start out maintaining canaries as pets. Then singing contests and competitions got here to be, permitting canary house owners to showcase their birds’ singing prowess.

As canary breeding continued, totally different breeds and varieties had been developed with distinct singing kinds, such because the Curler, Timbrado, Waterslager, and American Singer canaries. Every breed has its personal distinctive music sample, length, and tonal high quality. The curler, additionally referred to as the Harz Curler, is mostly thought-about to be the best singing Canary. They sing quietly with their beaks closed and their stunning music blends into the background. The Waterslager is so named as a result of its music resembles the babble of a brook and will have the best vary (low notes to excessive notes) of all singing Canaries. The Spanish Timbrado is the loudest of all with a bell-like warble of 12 distinct notes. Being a relative newcomer to the home Canary world the chook intently resembles the wild Canary.

Canaries are nonetheless fashionable and there’s even an American Singers Membership, devoted to that pressure of canary which the membership defines as “a Music Kind Canary bred within the U.S. … to supply a Canary chook that has, ( l ) an impressive free harmonius music pleasing to the ear, neither too loud or too harsh, with loads of selection, (2) a ravishing form or sort, not over 5 3/4 inches lengthy with tight feathers that may please the typical residence lover of Canaries.”

I study one thing on daily basis.

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