So I started looking for canary songs online. A young bird doesn’t learn to sing until he’s 6 months old, so that’s why you might pay a little more for a canary – but it’s worth it! As I’ve written earlier, I pretty much think my canary is a girl, which means they didn’t put her in the song room to learn from the experienced singers, and now she doesn’t know how! :(

I won’t give up, though, so I found a few canary songs on Youtube to play for my bird every day, and maybe he/she will learn some notes. Here is a longer, pretty song on Youtube:

American Singer Canary with Waterslager Sounds

Don’t know how to upload the vid here. But anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I ever saw the word Waterslager. The only thing I don’t like is the very small cage the canary is in. Yeah, I know it’s a show cage, like the owner says, but still PAINFULLY small. I feel very bad for the bird.

But one of the comments there has really taken my fancy, by Middledeeping:

American Singer canaries are the greatest birds ever. Mine lived? for 13 1/2 years, was the healthiest, most exuberant, adaptable pet I’ve ever owned. The pet shop owner warned me that it might take 2 wks. for him to adjust & start singing. He sang his head off in the tiny cardboard box on his way home from the shop! He drove all over the USA w/me, propped up on a pillow in the front seat w/a lap belt around his cage, looking out the window & singing. His long song was simply breathtaking.

So interesting, people are. Who drives all over the US with a canary cage in the front seat!? True, you need the seat belt to secure the cage, when you have to drive a bird somewhere. But this person has gone aboveboard, putting the bird on a nice pillow to look around him! And did they travel for 13 years, or was that just one part of his happy life?

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons on Flickr, where I get all the best photos, guilt free. If you bookmark http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-nc-nd-2.0/ you will always be able to get great photos from people who are happy to share them, with just their name mentioned. This canary pic is from Zeetz Jones. Her funny explanation:

This is Andrea, my proud male singing canary. A while back he was rooming with Viktor, a male zebra finch. They were an odd couple from the beginning. Andrea loves the curly-leaf parsley to death while Viktor would snack on the bread roll clipped on the grill all day. Andrea didn’t like Viktor invading his space and would scream at him to Viktor’s deaf ears…

Bird fight!

(Also, my new spring cartoon, which is about Toyotas flying, and maybe not entirely nice, is over on my Op-ed Cartoons site now.)

More cartoons:

1. Free will in a cage.
2. Help for your bird in the hardware store.

I mean, who would have thought writing such an article was necessary? I don’t have any clothespins, do you? Does anyone? Nevertheless, I’ll read anything about canaries, and I was fascinated by the title.

Here were the 2 suggestions I think would be helpful if you have both clothespins AND a canary:

• Start using your clothespins daily. Whenever you open the cage door to handle your canary or to clean the cage, have the clothespins handy to keep the cage door open. (Well, maybe not the first sentence. And in my cage, the doors stay open on their own, but many cages do have spring doors.)
• Clothespins can hold the canaries’ greens (leaves, stalks etc.) from the top of the cage. (I use metal clips for greens or treats, and some kind of clip is essential, so everything doesn’t flop to the bottom of the cage. Again, I don’t have any clothespins, but sure, they’d work.)

The suggestion I didn’t like is to use them as perches. I think they’re too short for the bird to feel comfortable and secure. Also, he would slip on the plastic ones.

But let’s not overlook the attractive design in the photo someone made with clothespins to illustrate the article! I like the yellow one at the top, the color of a canary. And it reminds me of the practice women used to follow when they made quilts: the idea that only God is perfect, so they would have one mismatching piece or color or stitch in every quilt.

Even, or maybe especially, in the strict Amish quilts.

More cartoons:

1. Make your figurehead a canary.
2. Free will in a cage.

Police arrested 19 people from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey and seized 150 birds in a house raid on an alleged bird-fighting operation. Most of the birds were saffron finches, which are small birds native to South America, and a few were canaries, officials said.

Police said they made the arrests Sunday just as spectators had placed bets and were getting ready to watch the birds fight at a home in Shelton, just west of New Haven. Authorities say they seized $8,000 in alleged betting money.

The 19 people, all originally from Brazil, were charged with cruelty to animals and gambling.

The birds would fight for some 15 minutes, pecking each other in the legs, head and eyes…

This was in New Haven?? Gross. I don’t know how they decided who the winner was – it would take a lot for a canary beak to inflict much damage on another bird, but I guess the eyes would be vulnerable. I think the red canaries, or saffrons, as they call them, are more aggressive. I had a red canary who would hiss at me if I woke him up at night. Not really aggressive, for a bird weighing about an ounce…

From CNN:

Wayne Kasacek of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, which helped remove the birds, said that at least four of the finches have eye injuries.

But this is how serial killers start, by killing small animals. Or, in this case, Brazillian immigrants. No info on whether they’re legal. I love the comment someone left:

so wonderful when people from other countries come here and share their rich heritage and exotic traditions…

More cartoons:

1. Help for your bird in the hardware store.
2. Make your figurehead a canary.

Busted! Most people are at REAL jobs during the day, and so I feel free to walk around the courtyard in my raggedy shorts that are too short, and goofy top. Not to mention carrying my birdcage. But she caught me, on her way to work!

Photo by Elizabeth Dilts.

But I had my reasons for taking my canary for a walk. I recently read that canaries need a lot of Vitamin D – because they have a higher need for calcium than, say, my parakeet. And even though I carry the canary to my sunniest window every day, you can’t get that vitamin through glass. It’s also good exercise for their legs and feet and wings, to keep their balance in a swinging cage. So I’ve been taking him on walks.

I’m not the only one. Several years ago I had read in Bird Talk about canary owners in the Far East taking their birds for a walk, and meeting in a park, and this colorful idea had stuck in my mind. They must really love their birds! Surprisingly, it was hard for me to find more about this online, even though it turns out that it’s in China. This blogger noted that:

The men in this picture are resting on the curb beside their caged canaries, which they’ve taken out of the home, walked to the park and hanged in the trees. There are probably 20-30 birds in bamboo cages hanging in the trees near their owners.

My canary has never been outside, as far as I know, except perhaps from the breeder to the owner. And when I go away for a few days, I take him to a friend to look after him. But that’s about it.

I don’t stay outside long – as you may have noticed from my weather reports, I hate the heat, and the constant sun here. But a little bit is okay.

And once my canary got over his obsessive fear of the machine gun stuck to my forehead  (ie, my visor, which is probably a disguise like a beak, to look like a bird – all of which is NOT RIGHT, he thinks)- he just loves it, looking all around, noticing other birds, and of course getting unfiltered sun.

Update: Elizabeth Dilts, linked to the photo above,  wrote some more about it in a new post today!

I was surprised by this tradition when I first arrived in Shanghai, but it’s very common. I now live in Tianjin, farther north and near Beijing, where it is not as common here. That may be because of the very poor air quality or the much cooler climate. However, I’ve asked my Chinese friends who are from south of the Yangtze and each said it is very common. Men usually take their birds out in the early morning, from 6:30 a.m. to about 9 a.m. The birds hang in cages in the trees, which makes me wonder how much sunlight the birds actually absorb.
Originally, I thought this habit was just another way older people socialize in the mornings here.

(Or, how my neighbor and I socialize here in LA!)

But Elizabeth brings up a good point: certainly canaries shouldn’t be left in the sun, ever. Like all birds, they need at least a portion of the cage to be in shade. On one terribly hot day, I was drying my hair outside, and he was next to me. All of a sudden he started panting, breathing through his mouth, as dogs do, trying to cool down. That was frightening, and I immediately brought him inside to cool down. WARNING: all birds can overheat quite quickly, so do not ever leave them in the sun without shade in the cage!!

Photo is by Patricia, in Picasa. As usual, Google has made it impossible to contact any of the Picasa photographers, has a ©symbol up for the photo, and YET STILL HAS HIGH RES OF THE PHOTO AND INVITES YOU TO SEND IT AND PRINT IT!! Google is a TOTAL thief, and I will write more about copyright later. Anyway, I just used it small, and would be happy to use her real name if I ever find her.

*Since I wrote this a month ago, I’ve found other references to people taking birds in cages for a walk, and have added these notes.

From the Washington Post:

As the morning stretched on, old men waddled around with wire bird cages in hand. An expat had explained the rationale of “walking” a caged bird: The bird’s exercise comes from gripping its swaying perch.

From the Shangai Star, this was fascinating:

WHEN American traveller Archie Bell arrived in Shanghai in the early years of the 20th century, a pleasing street scene attracted him. A group of Chinese men were walking in the streets holding birdcages in their hands.

People may have turned a blind eye to such scene when they first encountered them, thinking perhaps that the man was just bringing the bird home to please his wife. But once they met the 20th or 30th bird-cage carrier, they may have found it rather strange, according to the book “The Spell of China” written by Archie Bell.

In Bell’s eyes, these men went out for walks with their pet birds, because it was a custom passed on from generation to generation. Even today, it can still easily be seen that many of China’s elderly men like to pass their time in this way.

In nearly every household, despite their cramped conditions, an empty space would be left for feeding one or several birds, tied by cords and living in clean birdcages hanging in the gardens.

On festive occasions, people in the city often went to temples or to places with ponds and gardens to breathe the fresh air, taking their birds with them.

This unique scene also aroused the attention of Alicia Bewicke Little, who wrote in her book, “The Land of The Blue Gown”, that the existence of each tree seemed to be solely for the purpose of hanging birdcages. Even people who could not afford to plant trees had a long bamboo pole with attachments from which to hang the birdcages.

In their daily lives, Chinese people took great pleasure from the company of song birds. And the happiness and sadness of birds awoke considerable sympathy among them, Little wrote.

This is from an Olympics blog from this summer:

Carrying pretty wooden cages, often with velvet covers, white haired men fill the streets as they make their way to the nearest park, swinging their cages as they walk, an effective way to maximize a walk for the bird I am told. Once they’ve arrived at a park, they most usually find a suitable place to loiter, or friends who have already found a suitable place to loiter, and then they neatly place their cage and bird on a nearby branch and sit down for a nice long chat. Some men like to whistle to their birds, but most just sit quietly with a friend or two talking.

More cartoons:

1. Help for your bird in the hardware store.
2. Make your figurehead a canary.