Colour canaries, explained
Lipochrome, melanin, intensive, mosaic: the four words that sort every colour canary on the show bench.
Canaries come in three broad show families. Type canaries are bred for shape and posture, song canaries for their voice, and colour canaries for the colour they carry and how cleanly they wear it. Aviario Ashee breeds colour canaries, so that is the family this guide covers.
Ground colour: red, yellow or white
Every colour canary has a ground colour, the base pigment in the feather, called lipochrome. It is red, yellow or white. Red-ground canaries trace back to early twentieth-century crosses between canaries and the red siskin of Venezuela, which is where the “red factor” came from.
White comes in two forms. Recessive white birds carry no lipochrome at all and look snow white. Dominant white birds usually keep a trace of yellow along the edge of the wing.
Clear or marked: lipochrome and melanin
A bird with no dark pigment is called a clear, or lipochrome, canary: pure red, yellow or white. A bird that also carries melanin, the dark pigment, shows streaking over its ground colour. A black-red bird, often called bronze, is a red ground with black melanin over it.
Category: intensive, non-intensive or mosaic
Category describes how the colour sits in each feather.
- Intensive: colour runs right to the tip of the feather. The bird looks deep and glossy, with tighter, finer feathering.
- Non-intensive, or frosted: each feather ends in a fine pale edge, which gives a softer, velvet look.
- Mosaic: colour is held to a few areas (the face, shoulders and rump) and the rest of the bird is pale. Cocks and hens show the pattern differently, and the hens are usually the more striking.
Breeders usually pair an intensive bird with a non-intensive one. Pairing two intensives over generations thins the feather, and pairing two non-intensives coarsens it.
Putting it together
A show label combines all three. A “red intensive” is a clear red bird with colour to the feather tip. A “red mosaic hen” is a pale bird with red on the face, shoulders and rump. A “bronze non-intensive” carries black melanin over a frosted red ground.
Want to see the colours in person? Get in touch to arrange a visit, or browse the canary colours.
