Colours of Wildlife: Forest Canary
Created | Updated Jan 1, 2017
Forest Canary
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
This is one of South Africa's less frequently seen bird species, a Forest Canary, Crithagra scotops. As you might guess, it inhabits forested regions, where it easily hides in dense growth or rank grass on the forest edges. Nevertheless, the patient birdwatcher can fairly easily catch a glimpse of these in suitable habitat. Forest canaries are restricted to South Africa, where they occur from the cool forests of the Western Cape eastwards through the forests of the Eastern Cape, Kwazulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, to the mountain forests of Limpopo as far as the Soutpansberg. They're slightly smaller than sparrows, and the males and females are very similar, the females only being slightly less bright and boldly marked.
Little Singing Dogs
Some of you will, I hope, be aware that the kind of canary people keep in cages, occurs in the wild on the Canary Islands, off the north-western coast of Africa. These canaries have been bred into many forms, but the wild form, still plentiful on the islands, looks quite similar to the Forest Canary we have here – greenish-yellow with a streaky breast and back.
Some people might think the Canary Islands were named for the canaries that live there. Actually, it's the other way round: the canaries were named for the islands, and the name actually comes from the Latin word 'canis' which means 'dog'! So the islands are actually the dog islands, and so those little birds are called after dogs as well! I don't actually know why the islands were named after dogs... there are many unique things on those amazing volcanic islands that could much more appropriately have inspired a name for them.
Africa, the Canary Continent
In truth, sub-Saharan Africa as a whole is the place for canaries – about forty species occur here! They're all very closely related, and also close to the Wild Canary of the islands, but they're not all called canaries: some are called seed-eaters, or siskins, or citrils. This isn't very consistent, but it's mainly the yellow ones that are called canaries, the grey or brown ones being called seed-eaters. Still, they're basically all canaries: small seed-eating birds with relatively stout bills. There is variation with some eating bigger, tougher seeds and nuts – and consequently having even stouter bills – and others eating finer seeds and having thinner bills. Once all grouped into the genus Serinus, they've at present been shuffled around a bit with many species now landing in the new genus Crithagra. Outside of Africa, closely related species are called linnets and serins.
African canaries consequently also live in a variety of habitats, depending on what kinds of seeds they eat. Many live in grasslands, often in mountains or highland regions. Many inhabit savannahs too, where several species of grass provide them with food. Two species are confined to the shrubby 'fynbos' (fine-bush) habitat of the Western Cape, and a few occur in sparsely vegetated semi-desert. Many species have accommodated themselves to human-changed habitats such as suburban gardens, where they are welcome guests at bird feeders.
But canaries are generally absent from forests. There is not a single species that occurs in the vast equatorial rainforest belt that stretches from Guinea in the west to Uganda in the east. But there's one group of canaries that have adapted themselves to the somewhat less imposing, cool mountain forests of Eastern to Southern Africa. These are the three species of Citrils, generally small canary species with black faces. They have finely pointed bills and feed on seeds that are on the small side. Two other species are closely related to them: the Black-Faced Canary of rank central-African grasslands and forest edges, and the Papyrus Canary, which you might gather is specialized to inhabit papyrus swamps. And one final canary – our very own Forest Canary – is also closely related to these five! There is one peculiarity about this grouping: the three forest-living citrils, and the black-faced canary, occur over a large swathe of suitable habitat in east and central Africa, down to the southern tip of Malawi, but then they completely avoid the suitable forest habitat in Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique! The forest canary itself only turns up in South Africa, but seeing as it is so closely related to those others, there must have been ancestors of it which at one point had to traverse that large gap. So the question is: why didn't forest-living canaries, either on route from South to East Africa, or going the opposite way, remain in all that suitable habitat – why did they leave a gap? Even today, it's a small distance for a flying bird to cross, either from the Malawi side, or from the Soutpansberg region, into the forested highlands of Zimbabwe, making it quite peculiar that such a large region should remain canary-deprived.
Quiet Canaries
Wild canaries in general are not as vocal as their domesticated, caged counterparts. Most of them do indeed have beautiful, bright and cheerful little voices, but their songs tend to be on the short side and not very complicated. The forest canary, too, is not much of a singer. Even compared to other wild canaries, it is quite quiet. It has a soft, whistling contact call, and a longer song, with warbled, trilling phrases that last 10 or more seconds. The song likely has a territorial purpose. Forest canaries tend to live in pairs or small groups, probably a male and female and some of their grown offspring. They often occur on the edges of forests, or in clearings. In these more open patches, a variety of forest grasses grow, providing nutritious seeds to these canaries as well as to a few other seed-eating species, such as swee waxbills, green twinspots and red-backed mannikins. But forest canaries also venture into the gloomy, deep forest, where they will seek berries and other small fruits, often in the high canopy. They occasionally venture into non-forest habitat like fynbos, succulent scrub and moist woodland, but never stray very far from true forest.
Because of the seclusion of their habitat, forest canaries have not been much studied compared to the common canaries inhabiting open regions. In addition, they are very active, flitting about quickly in the dense undergrowth where it's difficult to follow them. Furthermore, in forests that are cool and moist year-round, plants flower and fruit sometimes in cycles that don't clearly correspond to the seasons. So, the canaries will move about unpredictably throughout the year, in search of food. But they do come to gardens, if seeds are put out. They also much appreciate bird baths, though the mountain forests typically afford many clear, cool, bathing streams.
These canaries can also breed at any time of the year in much of their habitat, but tend to breed in the summer. In years when much food is available, they may raise two broods. Like other canaries, they make small, cup nests, lined with soft, fluffy feathers or plant down, placed well-concealed in a bush or tree. They lay three or four pale blue eggs, with fine red specks. The eggs incubate for about two weeks; the hatchlings are naked and blind, but grow rapidly and fledge at the age of about fifteen days.
Most indigenous forests in South Africa are well-protected at present; these little birds are consequently in no imminent danger of extinction. But in the past, there were people who caught them for the caged bird trade, under the name Natal Linnet. This species does not at all thrive in captivity and thankfully trapping doesn't seem to be happening much at the moment.
