We are currently enduring some of the most bitterly cold weather of recent years here in the UK - with temperatures in parts of Scotland and England falling to minus 15 degrees Celsius. Here on the East Coast we have the moderating influence of the North Sea, so it only fell to about minus 8 degrees last night. I just checked my max-min thermometer in my birdroom and it fell to around minus one degrees inside last night, and it will barely get to plus 5 degrees today. Despite this the canaries are singing their heads off and flying around inside the aviaries; but they are always outside to greet the sun and spend as much time outside as possible, even when the ground is permanently iced and snow covered, as at present.

I provide no heat in my bird room during the winter (it is a 40 feet long stone-built 19th Century 'bothy' and would cost a fortune to heat), other than an infra-red heat lamp as a 'treat' when they have been bathing in cold water - I like them to dry as quickly as possible. But it is even more vital that they bathe at this cold season than in summer - since cleaning, oiling and preening the feathers at frequent intervals gives them maximum insulation value and helps keep them warm. As long as they are receiving lots of good carbohydrate-rich seeds to burn as metabolic fuel, and lots of oil-rich seeds, like rape, niger and hemp during this cold weather, they just sit there glowing like little furnaces. It is wet and draughts which kill in cold weather; but dry, draught-free quarters and plenty of fuel-food allows them to thrive in temperatures which would kill you or me through hypothermia in about 12 hours.

The biologist Bernard Poe explained why birds can perform this small miracle in his excellent book 'The Cage Bird Handbook' (Bailey Bros & Swinfen, London circa 1950?)

In his chapter on 'The Circulatory System' he writes:

1. The blood of birds is the richest in the animal kingdom - in terms oxygen-carrying power; far richer than the blood of humans, cheetahs,
    horses or gazelles. It contains about 4 million red corpuscles per cubic centimeter and the individual corpuscles are more than twice the
    size of human corpuscles.

2. The human heartbeat is a standard 72 bpm, a chicken's is about 145 bpm but canaries heartbeats have been measured at rates from 300
    to 1000 beats per minute; most who have listened to a canary heart compare it to a revving, or purring car engine.

3. Normal human temperature is 98.6F and a rise of 6 degrees will possibly kill us, but most bird's are around 108 degrees - and the canary
    has one of the highest temperatures ever measured - around 110 degrees - exceeded only by the swallow and martin (110.7 degreesF).

4. During incubation, a canary hen's temperature soars to a staggering 116 degrees Fahrenheit.

Poe sums up the combined effects of

a.) the richest oxygen carrying blood in the animal kingdom
b.) the fastest beating heart in the animal kingdom and
c.) the highest temperature in the animal kingdom. He writes:

"This huge expenditure of energy, of which birds are capable, gives them an enormous advantage over other animals in speed of movement, sustained activity, the ability to cover vast territories and to perform long migrations. Cage birds, confined in a narrow space, with their food provided for them and with no need to engage in long, wearisome migrations, no need to struggle for possession of mates, no need to gather nesting materials from a wide area .   .these cage birds find themselves provided with great powers which are of little use. Happily they cannot reflect on what a sad condition it is to possess vast powers of speed and endurance which they have no opportunity or freedom to use. They are in the same state as a man would be who owned a beautiful ocean going yacht, with racing sails, diesel engine, satellite navigation, maps - everything designed to sail the world's oceans, but who never leaves harbour"

My own analogy is that they are like an Indianapolis Formula One racing car, or a Ferrari Testarosso, fuelled with high octane gas, and capable of sustained speeds of 180 miles an hour, but which never leaves the garage, and just sits there ticking over.
So look after your 'Feathered Ferraris' and make sure they have plenty of carbohydrates and oil seeds during the snowy weather. I give mine a big bowl of cous-cous and a handful of niger seed and maw seed as support, alongside their normal complement of mixed canary seeds, greens and grit. They are happy as sand-boys.

Graham White
 

LINKS