The education of the spanish timbrado canaries by using electronic means: more questions than answers
In 1921, Karl Reich
was widely known in the canary breeders circle in Germany, not only for the
perfection of his bird recordings but also for the song quality of his canaries
flourished with a peculiar repertoire mostly based in the nightingales' song.
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| Phonograph similar to the one Reich used |
Reich’s work was
mainly carried out by altering the molting period of his nightingales, he had to it because
the nightingales stopped singing when the canary breeding season started (by May). Reich
started modifying the nightingales diet at the same time that gradually altered the amount of light, creating the effect that the season was far ahead
than it really was. By using this method, he managed that his nightingales
molted in April and were in their best singing condition by September and October
which was the ideal time for his young canaries to learn.
Since 1910,
Reich had been recording and producing
disks containing his canaries’s songs at the same time he sent them to his
circle of friends in different parts of Europe. Reich was an authentic pioneer
of birdsongs recording, having them singing with the perfect timing to be
recorded, a real feat in those times were audio editing was not possible. Reich’s
merit was not only the use of nightingales' recordings to educate his Roller
canaries (becoming this the first official record
that this was done) but also establishing
the first evidence that it was possible to educate a canary by only using external audio
sources.
The spanish timbrado canary is poised
at a historic crossroads with two clear trends related to the need of educating
the canaries, namely: the isolation of canaries letting them to develop its
song (i.e., innatism) and the formal education by using maestros
or alternative means.
There is a lot of polemic with
regards this subject; those who favor the “no education” method preach that
canaries obtained by means of education lose are monotonous and repetitive and
that eventually lose their song while the group that support the education claim
that there is no such thing as the song
innatism and therefore the education is the foundation for a quality and
flawless repertoire. Both positions are opposing sides and it is very unlikely
that will reach an agreement shortly.
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| These canaries were educated with electronic means |
The
historic reference in other song canary types such as Malinois or Roller is
using formal education by using a maestro with the objective of producing a
flawless and extensive repertoire. The exclusive use of maestros does not
guarantee flawlessness or assimilation of unwanted tours, although the right
use of electronic means to educate canaries allows the objective of a bird with
a long/extensive repertoire or capable of executing complex flourishes. The
way-forward seems to be obvious for those who favor the education but it’s
paved with hundreds of answered questions and of consequences, especially for
fanciers of earlier generations.
The internet has not only changed
in many ways the way we live, communicate, relate to each other or work but
also has changed forever the hobby of breeding canaries. Nowadays it’s possible
for the fanciers to communicate instantly with other fanciers independently of
their geographic location by using email, dedicated webpages, blogs, Youtube or
social networks such as facebook or tweeter. As such, it’s possible to share, assess
and compare our work as canary breeders with thousands of fanciers worldwide.
By the same token, it’s very
easy to share song or video files and also carry out virtual song contests (
http://www.timbrado.com/concursocurso2004.shtml).
The possibilities are unlimited and I don’t have any doubt that shortly we will
be able to “vote” for the bird of our preference as part of the judgement process. Technology constantly opens new paths,
and, nowadays, in countries such as Colombia or Venezuela some contests are
celebrated by a closed circuit television systems so everyone is able to listen
to the birds with disturbing the judgment or creating noises that could affect the execution
of the repertoire by the canary.
The easy access to audio editing
software such as Audacity (
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
has also contributed significantly to the use of electronic recordings to
educate our Spanish timbrado canaries.
And
this is one of the causes of the existing digital divide among fanciers; those
who have knowledge and IT skills will have an advantage over those who haven’t
and, in such way, dependent of the
skilled ones or not having other option that the use of maestros in the
old-way(it a good alternative but in the context intended as a handicap).
Advantages of using electronic means
The education of Spanish timbrado canaries
by using electronic means, properly carried out, provides a good set of advantages
to the fanciers, namely:
Enables the use of the best individuals for Reproduction: the use of maestros implies reserving some individuals (probably the best
ones), avoiding them to reproduce or limiting it. This is done in order to
preserve the maestro’s repertoire as long as possible.
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| 34-ATV7-2007 a polemic and interesting canary educated by electronic means |
Exposes the
young canaries to a customized and flawless repertoire: the fancier can select the tours the canary
will listen to, by eliminating those that he doesn’t like, lack of the minimum diction
to be used to educate or emphasizing those that he would like the canary to
sing. Also, if we have all tours included in the song code we can easily
generate canaries with “complete” songs from the repertoire point of view.
Avoid the
loss of tours during the molt period: it is no secret that some canaries
lose part of their repertoire during the molt period as part of the natural process in which their testoterone level decreases. However, if we expose
those individuals to the same repertoire which was used when they were
educated, they will keep most of their individual repertoire.
It
is also worth noticing that the use of the electronic means has the following
implications:
It is required a certain level of IT skills to get the best out
this method.
It’s of the utmost
importance to create acoustic
barriers and if possible “physical”
to secure the exposition to the “learning material” in an exclusive way.
It’s very important to constantly enrich
our audio library making a habit the recording of those individuals that stand
out in our aviary because of their diction, ability to build tours or generating
new links between tours from the original song. Not all canaries that are
trained (by any method) build an exact copy of the song used to educate them, on
the contrary, some will execute it in a better way by linking tours
and notes according to their vocal and learning capabilities.
The
selection process must be systematically and rigorously carried out in
accordance to the bird capability to “learn and execute” the original
repertoire.
The audio
quality is a cornerstone of this method, an audio with notes or tours that lack
of diction, have background noise, hiss, notes not linked properly or distorted
will make the process to fail and waste one year effort.
Selection
As mentioned before, it’s necessary to
select only those individuals with certain characteristics that are of our
interest, namely:
Learning
capacity, in this sense we must take into account:
·
Complexity: the bird
capacity to “understand” or imitate a complex note
·
Repertoire extension:
number of notes from the original repertoire learned by the individual.
·
Innovation: The originality of the
bird to translate or imitate the note or tour.
· Diction: how the canary “says” the
note or tour, sometimes this is also defined as the easiness for the listener
to identify and translate as an onomatopoeia as disposed in the song official
standard.
· Composition: quality
of the arrangement and linked notes executed by the bird, i.e., the bird
contribution to the final product.
It’s also worth noticing that our selection
criteria must depend on exclusively of our objective: canaries that are capable
of executing an extensive repertoire or those that are capable of executing
very complex notes. This is also a polemic subject: judges have a framework the
song official standard, in that sense, how would they score an individual with
a short repertoire but capable of executing very complex notes or tours. It
looks like there is no much space in the song official standard to reward this
type of bird and for this reason some of them will fill the canary score with
songs that are not executed by the canary.
Techniques
In the technical aspect there are a
lot of variants:
·
Use of electronic means exclusively or a
combined method with one or several maestros
·
Speakers location to produce optimal results
·
Playback volume.
·
Audio Repertoire with isolated notes or provide
the song
·
Number of repertoires
·
Frequency and daily duration
·
Level of acoustic and /or physical isolation
·
Continuous instruction until the end of the plastic
song or focused in certain periods
·
Ideal number of individuals per Cage
Summarizing, all fanciers that use this technique
for educating their Spanish timbrado canaries must have their own criteria in
relation to the variables above exposed, what is extremely interesting is that
there is a lot to learn to master the technique as it opens a lot of
possibilities to the fancier and that this technique is here to stay.
References
A Brand New
Bird: How Two Amateur Scientists Created The First Genetically Engineered
Animal - Tim Birkhead
Basic Books; 1st Edition. edition
(August 20, 2003)
Notes from the author
This article was firstly published in the “ornitologia
Práctica” magazine may 2011 number 47.
It has also been published in other magazines like
Club Timbrado de Madrid, ATC magazine and Venezuela National Contest magazine.
The reader can agree or disagree on the concept but
respect is required, I have practiced this method with success (not measured
only on contests but on the quality of the obtained individuals).
There are lots of myths around the education of
canaries, one of those is that you get always canaries with similar songs, I invite you to watch
all my videos in youtube from video number 1 to 28, all those canaries were
trained with the same audio and if it's obvious that all are different, they might have similar notes or tours but they don't sound alike. Other urban legend is that
if you educate them, they will lose their repertoire during the molt period,
this definitely not true and if they lose notes due to the molt period it’s related to
the level of testosterone and the neurogenesis process which has nothing to do
with the education or lack of it.
Even though this article is referred to the spanish timbrado canary; I am quite sure that applies as well to other song-type canaries.
Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed!.
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