Baby Chickies

[Hurley]

Just thought I'd share some photos of my baby chickies (American singer canaries) now that they are fledging and have cute feathers. The first photo of each is from banding day at a week of age. They grow so FAST. I'm too used to cold-blooded babies.

ASC08 #001
My first canary to hatch, and he/she shall be called "Chicken". Chicken is a white ground 25% variegated bird out of a blue (white ground, heavily variegated) x yellow 50% variegated hen. Poor Chicken has the dubious honor of being my pet project for hand-taming me a canary. So far he's doing quite well and getting pretty used to attention.

[Hurley]

ASC08 #002

A lovely patterned clutchmate that is a blue (white ground with 75% variegation). I love the head markings.

[Hurley]

ASC08 #003
A darker chick, >75% variegated blue (white ground, heavy variegation)...probably nearly considered a "foul", but I think he shows a few too many light feathers. He's going to be so pretty when the brown fades out to slatish grey/blue.

[Hurley]

Last chick from this clutch, little'en was and is well behind his siblings, but is growing steadily. Gonna be a charmer when he grows up.

ASC08 #010 (formerly 004, but he slipped his band this week and momma bird tossed it to parts unknown).

(And no, I didn't actually band this chick on banding day as it was way too small yet. The band was for ID in the photo at the time, LOL.)

[Hurley]

I'm pretty amazed that this whole clutch came out with white ground color. White in this line is a co-dominant gene with the homozygous white condition being lethal. This clutch should have yielded 50-50 whites and yellows (or their dark varients blues and greens).

Here is dad, "Jack", the blue (50% variegated) and, "Juliette", the yellow 25% variegated hen.

[Russell]

congrats on the babies! I've never bred canaries before! Only tiels, keets, Bourkes, and rosellas. Great pictures! I have a generic male canary. We love him to peices! Great birds.

[Hurley]

Next up is a clutch out of "Maestro", the green foul (nearly all variegated except a few yellow feathers between the legs) and "Sonata", the 50% yellow variegate. The camera doesn't show the olive green hue on Maestro, but he's actually quite attractive for a "plain green canary".

Here's Mom and Dad. You can hear Maestron belting it out on YouTube at YouTube - Maestro - American Singer Canary.

[Hurley]

This clutch also has 4 chicks, with the youngest a little behind the rest. You can actually prevent this by pulling the eggs as they are laid and replacing them with dummy eggs until the whole clutch is laid, then switch them back so the eggs get set all at once and start growing. They'll go quite dormant until warmed up by momma.


ASC08 #005, 007, 008, and 009. #007 is a solid green (green self) bird and will likely end up looking quite like his dad. If it's a male, it's Bond, James Bond.

[Hurley]

That's all for now. Hard to believe the "before" and "after" photos are only 3 weeks apart.

[Piper]

Great before & after photos!! We've never raised birds either. What a difference 3 weeks makes