A new picture is uploaded to the web every 30 seconds when the Cam is running. Two babies hatched out April 30, and are growing fast - don't miss it!

This is the website for the cook-it-yourself hot bird food mixes known as 'Beak Appetit'. As well as product listings, there is a wealth of basic pet bird care information here.

My birds love these hot mixes, and I find it an easy way to provide them with well-balanced 'treats', especially for those stubborn seed-only eaters. I like to cook up a big batch, and pack what I am am not going to use right away into ice-cube trays. When frozen, I pop the cubes out and bag them; this way each portion - one cube - can easily be thawed, heated, and served whenever I wish.

If you spot your bird acting like this, remove him from the sun or whatever other source of heat is present immediately. If this is not possible then lightly mist him, to help speed cooling, or offer him some cool water to bathe in.

Well, I guess that's it for this time - hope everybody has a safe and happy time over the next couple of weeks! The next issue is due out May 27th - until then, may you and your birds enjoy all the best of everything!

Robirda
May 13, 2001
www.robirda.com

Welcome to the Companion Birds e-zine

For bird people who care.

Hello! Welcome to the ninteenth issue of Flock Talk! Please send comments, ideas, tips, tricks, or stories to Robirda

Feature Article

If you are a canary owner, one of the most commonly heard questions of all is, "Can you tell me what colour my canary is?" The only people sometimes exempt from this question are those with yellow canaries. So for all of you who wish to be able to understand fully the answer to this question, I would like to present;

by Arlene Rosenthal

All colour is actually the visible combination of two separate elements, light and the physical properties of the object that light is striking, both factored by the brain’s ability to interpret what the eye is seeing.

Light is a form of energy, a wave-like electromagnetic radiation. The range of these electromagnetic waves includes microwave and short-wave radio, AM and FM radio band-widths, radar, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma-rays and more. Essentially, these radiations are all similar in their character, the primary difference among them being the frequencies they vibrate at.

The human eye is capable of perceiving only a very small portion of this spectrum, the part we call 'visible light'. This is composed of a 'bundled' series of colour wavelengths traveling together - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - each of which may be differentiated when light is passed through a glass prism and is deflected from its normal path. The component colours become bent at slightly different degrees when this is done, separating one from the other.

These colours normally cannot be seen because they are so pure that they quite literally cancel each other out, into what is termed 'white light', but they become visible when they strike an object. And here is where the physical properties of matter come into play.

No object is truly solid in the ultimate sense of the word. Rather, they are composed of uncountable trillions of molecules, which consist of atoms roiling with the invisible energy of electrons in constant orbit around their nuclei.

The colour actually perceived when light strikes the surface of any object is entirely dependent upon the properties of its molecular makeup. Some surfaces absorb virtually all the wavelengths of visible light and reflect very little back. To our eyes such surfaces appear black. By contrast, a white surface has a molecular structure that reflects almost all the visible light. An object we see as yellow is one that absorbs nearly all the visible lightwaves except the yellow, reflecting it back as colour to our eyes.

So when we say that a canary is red, we really mean that the molecular structure of the lipochromes pigments in its feathers absorbs nearly all the wavelengths of visible light except red, reflecting that wavelength back to our eyes. In actuality, the canary’s feathers don’t possess any red at all: the perception of colour is generated solely by the red wavelength of light reflecting off the particular molecular structures of the lipochromes within them.

So much for the simplified lesson in the physics of colour.

But wait! There's more to the story. Without taking anything away from the tremendous work done by pioneers in the creation of the Red Factor Canary, decades of effort were doomed to failure because it wasn’t understood at the time - indeed, still isn’t fully understood by many - that the only pure colour there is comes from light! To put it another way - a pure red pigment colour, one that will reflect only red, simply doesn't exist.

No pigments can generate pure colour, because they themselves are never pure. For proof of this, one need only obtain one tube each of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet artist’s paint and mix them all together.

With the pure spectral colour of light, the blending of the seven colours cancel each other out and produce white. But with pigments, no matter how its done, the end result is and always will be, 'mud'.

We’ve all been taught that the three 'primary' colours, red, yellow and blue, form the basis from which three 'secondary' colours (green, orange and violet) can be mixed. All other colours (save black and white), can then be created from mixing two or more of these six colours.

We were instructed that, if we mix blue and yellow paints together, the result will be green; red and yellow, orange; red and blue, violet. All this is true as far as it goes, but just which shade of green does this give us? Grass-green, pine-green, lime-green, sea-green, hunter-green, peacock-green, moss-green or blue-green? Which orange? And which violet?

The truth is, most of this theory of colour mixing is one that only applies to the pure colour of visible light. Pigment colours are very different, and actually form six, not three, basic primary color groups.

Since every pigment blue has a bias to either green or violet, there are two distinct groups of blue, greenish-blues and violety-blues. Because every pigment yellow will lean slightly to the green or orange, all yellows can be placed in either greenish or lemon-yellows, or golden or orangy-yellows. Because every red pigment will contain either orange or violet, there are two types of red, orangy-reds or vermilions, and violety-reds or magentas.

The basic secondary colours of pigments also number six, these blending by degrees into the above primaries; greens are yellowish-greens and bluish-greens, oranges are reddish-oranges and yellowish-oranges, and violets are bluish-violets and reddish-violets.

What this means, is that if ever the yellow bias were bred entirely out of a canary's feathers, managing to produce a red-factor canary which is completely incapable of synthesizing any yellow lipochrome pigment at all, the result would not and could never be the long sought-after, pure-brilliant-scarlet canary. By the very nature of pigment colors, such a bird could only be a shade of violety-red or magenta.

The production of the actual ground colour in a canary, or any bird for that matter, is genetically programmed. When that colour is a lipochrome, the raw materials for that colour are derived from the carotenoids in the vegetable foods that the bird eats.

A normal Yellow Lipochrome Canary obtains its colour primarily from the carotenoids lutein and xanthophyll. A Red-Factor Canary can make use of still other carotenoids, such as the one known as carotene. To widely varying degrees, virtually all known species of birds with red in their plumage - Roseate Spoonbills, Flamingos, Scarlet Tanagers, Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks, Redpolls, Cardinals, Red Siskins, et al - are capable of metabolizing one or more of both red and yellow carotenoid pigments. Within a certain ratio, the more yellow they can balance with the red, the redder they appear; the less they are able to use, the more rosy-magenta the actual colour.

Many of the known yellow-factored bird species also use both types of carotenoids, although only those birds with decided orange coloring in their plumage are capable of metabloizing much of the red. Moreover, unless a yellow-factor also possesses a red-factor in its genetic makeup, no amount of colour additives in its diet will enable it molt out red, although many will certainly take on more of a golden-yellow tone.

It should be understood that every species of bird that is colored by lipochrome must have a supply of the proper carotenoids in its diet in order to produce that lipochrome. If it should somehow be deprived of them, all new feather growth will be white. Therefore, the Canary’s yellow, orange and red lipochromes are every bit as much dependent on the bird’s diet as they are on it’s genetics and the properties of light, matter and pigments.

What isn’t generally appreciated is that the Canary’s red factor, blending as it does with the factor for yellow, allows for an immense range of lipochrome ground colours to be produced. Even the Colourbred section of the fancy, admittedly still very much in its infancy, officially recognizes and sanctions but a few of them.

Insofar as lipochromes are concerned, the Colourbred fancy is currently focused, apparently, on extremes. Standards say that Reds must be deep, rich and as brilliantly fiery as color-feeding can make possible. The possibility that such supplementation might prove damaging to the birds' livers is not considered. Pinks are to be very bright and lively, ideally containing as little yellow as possible, while Yellows must be luminous and decidedly lemony.

The ivory-factored versions must be similar, but creamier. The frosted feather, or 'non-intensive', versions of these colours should be the same, only slightly less intense.

This allows for only a narrow range of idealized shades in each colour. Definative oranges are usually dismissed as being woefully defective. The peaches, apricots and melons, the sunny golds, the salmons and the tangerines, the many golden, rosy, violety and sherbet tones that are possible, are all thought of as culls. This is not to say that these colours don’t exist, for they certainly do - only that they are currently not considered desirable. Their breeding and development is, therefore, largely neglected save by a few.

Ironically, even though so many of the canary’s colour possiblities are ignored, a great many 'Mule' breeders are expending considerable time and effort to breed still other red and yellow factors into the Canary. (editor's note - hybrids of the canary and another songbird species are known as 'mules').

When this is accomplished it will allow the domestic Canary to utilize a wider range of carotenoids and so to appear in an even broader range of shades. The catch is, many - if not most - of these new shades will undoubtedly overlap the very colors that the Canary can currently be bred in!

Whatever results may arise, the one surety is that the old question, "What color is my canary, really?" will be the subject of many a lively discussion for years yet to come.

by Arlene Rosenthal
copyright © May 2001

In other species, such as most breeds of canaries, the genders are not differentiated by brightness of feather colour, yet still it is often true that the nest feathers will be duller than the eventual adult colour of the bird.

This dullness of the nest plumage is thought to be an adaptation which originally developed as an aid to survival for the helpless wild nestling - the duller the feathers, the easier it is to hide. The better hidden you are, the better your chance that a predator cannot find you.

"Your last issue had two articles about Palm Fruit - are you recommending this for all birds?"

My answer;

"Hello! I think Palm Fruit in limited amounts is probably good for everybody - people as well as birds! Be careful not to give too much, as it is quite rich. It is not a substitute for fresh food, but is a good supplement.

"I did try a variation of the Palm-Fruit cookie recipe (in issue 18) for my canaries. I thought they might have some trouble eating crunchy cookies, I wanted more of a soft-and-chewy textured cake to offer them.

"To achieve this I used some rolled oats as well as flour to thicken the batter, ground the nuts, and only added enough flour to make a batter, rather than a thick cookie dough. I baked it in a greased-and-floured rectangular cake pan, and when it was cool cut it into little bricks. I kept out a little for the next day's treat and froze the rest.

"It's all gone now, but they loved it!"