For a very long time, my father has had birds on the porch. That is, he took the front porch (which only accesses his home office), partitioned a large part of it with screen and wire, built a simple door frame into it, and then made it into a small home aviary. At first, he had parakeets in there, but they were not able to mix with other birds, and my dad wanted finches. Then he tried a variety of finches (owl, zebra, lady gouldians, etc.), and that was much nicer, but they are also very hard to care for (the gouldians died, and the zebras flourished, and the zebras pestered all the other birds. So finally, he hit upon canaries, and they’ve been happily singing away in there for many years now.

Not just singing, but also breeding; with nests in there, they tend to be quite prolific. He likes to keep their number down to about fifteen, but some years they just get out of hand. Just before I came, there were thirty-five (there are as many as forty-five some years)–but then he sold six of them to a friend, currently the best way to thin the flock, so to speak. He used to be able to trade and deal with a canary dealer in the area, but he went out of business, so now he sells them to friends and pet stores. And by keeping the color and breed strains he likes, he’s been able to produce some very vivid yellow and orange birds in there.

A few of them are of a “crested” breed, but with the way their feathers crown out on top, I like to call them the “punk” canaries. A few of them look like they have really bad hairpieces.

Many of the photos here came from a photo session with flash at high speed, so they’re caught in flight around the aviary. A bunch of quite beautiful birds, and their singing is wonderful as well.

An example of a bright orange canary.

A few really bad toupees.