Yellow-eyed Canary
Species: Canary
Latin name: Serinus mozambicus
English name: Yellow-eyed Canary, Yellow-fronted Canary
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Fringillidae
Description:
Habitat: Africa. From the Sahara to south-eastern South Africa. The male has a distinctive mask with two stripes running from the beak down to the lower cheeks. Its plumage is a vivid yellow, with a greenish-yellow back and head. The female is paler but, most notably, has a broken collar.
As with the White-rumped Canary, it is essential to establish breeding lines of this magnificent canary. Thousands were imported until the arrival of avian influenza in France, and sold at such low prices that one might well wonder at what price the importers were buying their ‘merchandise’ in Africa. How many of these canaries were bred? Very few. It is therefore time to take action and seek to breed all these finches that we can still find in bird shops or among collectors. This is the only chance we have to continue observing them, understanding them and demonstrating that breeding serves a real purpose. I know this may come as a shock, but keeping birds without trying to breed them makes no sense at all!
Returning to the Mozambique Canary, if you have a cage measuring 0.80 m × 0.50 m × 0.50 m, you can hope to breed them successfully. Be warned, however: in a communal aviary, the Mozambique Canary, like many canaries, is a real nuisance.
