Call of the Wild?
How Canaries Learn Their Song
by Kevin Roberts

Kevin spends the summers with me out at St. Malo, our little haven for over 50 bird species. Most days, he is outside with me while I work quietly in the yard.

Last summer was our first together. I would often catch a flash of bright yellow moving through the trees, and for a split second, panic would set in! My mind jumping to the idea that Kevin had escaped his cage. My heart would drop, only for me to quickly realize he was safe and sound. It was a goldfinch I was seeing.

Over time, I learned to recognize the call of the American goldfinch and could stay calm, knowing it wasn’t Kevin. But then something unexpected happened. As the summer went on, Kevin’s own vocalizations began to sound increasingly like those of his wild neighbours. At times, I could no longer easily tell his calls apart from the goldfinches around us. It left me wondering: was Kevin picking up the “Call of the Wild”?

What I was hearing is closely connected to how canaries and other songbirds learn their songs. Their vocalizations are not fixed at birth, but shaped by experience, practice, and the sounds they hear around them. Kevin’s changing song offers a small window into a process known as vocal learning.

Canaries do not hatch knowing their full song. Instead, they develop it over time through listening, practice, and repetition.

Young male canaries go through a sensitive learning period where they listen closely to adult birds. From this, they form a mental “song template” that guides their future singing.

At first, their sounds are unstructured and variable, often called subsong. During this stage, they are experimenting with voice control rather than producing a full, stable song.

With repeated practice, canaries gradually match their vocal output to the stored template. Their song becomes more structured, forming repeating patterns called syllables and motifs.

Specialized song-control regions in the brain help the bird compare what it sings to what it remembers. Through constant auditory feedback, the song becomes more accurate and refined over time.

Unlike many songbirds that stop learning their songs after their first year, canaries are considered open-ended learners. During each annual molting season, when they temporarily stop singing, their song system becomes more flexible again. This renewed neural plasticity allows them to modify existing songs and even add new syllables. As adults, they are not simply repeating a fixed song, but gradually reshaping it across seasons.

The acoustic environment also plays a major role. Canaries raised around strong, complex songs tend to develop richer vocalizations, while those without good models often produce simpler songs. This highlights the importance of social and auditory experience in shaping song structure.
Canary song is not a fixed instinct but a living, changing behavior shaped by listening, memory, practice, and ongoing brain plasticity. As a teacher, I find this utterly fascinating! Over time, these influences combine to produce the rich and varied songs we hear, sometimes even blending in surprising ways with the voices of wild birds nearby, just as Kevin’s summer calls seem to do.