Yes, most people think of canaries as aviary birds but, in nature, they are territorial and never live in flocks so, although the overbred (type, color and kitchen) have lost a lot of their natural spunk and do resign themselves to live with other birds, it is, at best, a stressful life for them - plus I firmly believe that emulating nature is always the best way in the long run. Also, the canaries I have are Spanish Timbrados and they are very aggressive little things (the more aggressive the canary, the better he will sing) so they would actually kill a female or any other bird you house them with. My canaries live loose in the birdroom so there is plenty of room for all of them not to have to have another bird near and still the males squabble all the time. Let me tell you a story, once I gave away two baby males to a friend of mine and I warned him to get two separate cages but people always think they know more than anybody else becuase they read a few postings in birdsites that tells them differntly and his wife decided that I was wrong, that one of them was a female because it did not sing and that it was OK to leave them together. Now, canaries cannot be visually sexed unless they are in season and I always wait until after their juvenile molt to give them away so, although I've always had an eye for sexing them when babies, it was very possible that I had made a mistake and, even though I told them that housing a male and female together was not a good idea, they did not listen. To make a long story short, the other bird was indeed a male only he wasn't singing at all because, if he had tried, his brother would have attacked him. And they did live together, apparently without a problem BUT, when breeding season came the next year (five months later) and the poor little silent one tried to sing, he got attacked mercilessly and that's when they realized they had been wrong all along and separated them. But, by then, the silent one was practically a skeleton from stress and not eating right (the stronger one was must have been preventing him from it). Thankfully, he recovered completely after a while in his own cage.
