FEMALE VENEZUELAN BLACK-HOODED RED SISKIN
This attractive but much less lively colored “other half” of the Black-hooded Red Siskin will also produce fertile canary hybrids. The female siskin illustrates very well the dimorphic colorations common to many wild birds, being slightly orange in many of the areas showing deepest red in the male Black-hooded Red Siskin.
These siskins are considerably smaller than even very small canaries, and they have an unattractive wild song. As might be expected, their coloring, size, and song characteristics are transmitted to the hybrids resulting from crossing with the canary. The fancier, through selective breeding back to desirable canary stock, endeavors to eliminate the unwanted siskin characteristics and at the same time retain the effect of the red coloring which produces many shades of apricot, orange and copper. [PLATE 31]