It is a common belief among those not familiar to the canary fancy that the canary is only available in a plain yellow color or its wild green coloration known as "self green."  The truth of the matter is that between the clear yellow and the green are many other colors. Variegated, whites, reds, and dilutions of these, as well as buffs and frostings are all commonly found and well established.

The food that your bird eats has a lot to do with its feather condition and coloration. The pigments that give color to a bird's feathers are derived from food and are deposited  in the feathers at molting time. These pigments are yellow, black, brown, and red.  Naturally occurring pigments that are soluble in fats are known as lipochromes; they give the canary his yellow coloring. Especially found in green foods, certain seeds, and egg yolk, these pigments deposit themselves fairly evenly throughout the feathering. The  lipochrome is the ground color from which all other colors may or may not overlay. Melanin's are the dark pigments of birds and are formed by proteins in the bird's diet. Unlike lipochromes, melanin's are by no means distributed evenly throughout the body. These mainly deposit themselves on the wing, tail, and central body feathers.  Variegation is the term used by fanciers to describe the condition in which the dark pigments of the canary's plumage are confined to certain parts of the body while others  remain pigmented with the lipochrome or, in this case, yellow. When speaking of variegated birds, several terms are used: clear, ticked, variegated,  foul, and self.

  Clear refers to a bird that displays no dark pigments in its feathering at all. Clear birds are found in all light colors, yellows, whites, and reds. The term ticked refers to a single area of dark feathers on a bird's body, wings or tail. On the wings and tail this area may not consist of more than three feathers, otherwise it is considered a single dark mark. A self colored bird is one that has no light feathering at all, the clear bird's counterpart. No light pigments exist anywhere on the bird's body. Birds that are referred to as buff lack lipochrome pigment in the very end of their feathers and therefore display a thin edging of white on the end of each feather. This is also referred to as frosting. In addition to this frosting, this type of bird does not seem to be so intense in its ground color as those that are not frosted.  Dark pigmented birds display the buff as a grayish or silvery edging on their feathers. The frosted birds show their white edgings on the tips of their feathers. For the most part, the frosted birds are better in type than non-frosted birds. The feathers of these birds are usually more compact and therefore thickly distributed over the body.

 The white variety of canaries either hide their lipochromes or do not have any, and therefore are lacking the yellow color. They are capable of displaying melanin's and variegation patterns just as other colored canaries. The dilute, otherwise known as agate canary, can best be described as a bird  that displays a reduction in the melanin pigments of its plumage. The dilute seem to have been produced from an ordinary mating of green to green that resulted in a pale, ash-gray hen. Because it is rather pale the dilute has never had a large following.

  The most popular of the canary colors is the red-factor. This color canary did not happen by accident, but was deliberately bred for. Through many experimental breeding it finally came about when a red-hooded skin and a canary were crossbred. This not only created fertile young, but young who carried the red gene and who could continue to pass it on to their offspring. This did not happen with one simple breeding, but took many years of patient work as well as back and cross breeding.

  The coloration of the red-factor bird ranges from pale orange to very bright red. To intensify the red coloring, the red-factor may be fed color food prior to its molt so that it can be distributed into the bird's feathers as they are formed. There are many color foods on the market that advertise themselves as able to change the color of any bird to red, however, this is only true if the bird carries the red gene. It is wise to feed such foodstuffs to your bird all year round so that its color comes in evenly rather than spotty.