Due to its lack of social behaviour, the canary is not naturally able to form a personal bond with a human. Only a hand-raised canary considers its human to be a conspecific and therefore has a natural bond of trust.

 

Getting a canary hand-tame requires a lot of time and patience. It must be fed regularly by a specific person. The same person should also spend a lot of time with the bird outside of feeding.

After filling the feeding bowl, the hand should be left quietly in the cage for a while. This way the canary gets used to it. If it is hungry, it will hop to its food despite the hand. Under no circumstances make quick movements when the bird is close. It must learn that the hand is not an enemy and thus gradually build up trust.

Under no circumstances should you ever catch the canary by hand. Rather, it should hop onto the hand of its own accord. This can take a long time, however, because the bird is not genetically predisposed to be a social animal and is used to living alone or in pairs.

When the bird has reached the point where it is not afraid of your hand, give it its food in the palm of your hand. It has to hop onto the hand to eat. While doing this, hold the hand very still and talk the bird through it.

The canary is an unsociable animal. Any attachment to a human must be voluntary, because he does not need human contact. Therefore, it must never be put under pressure. If the bird does not show any progress even after months of patient practice, one usually has to accept that it does not trust the human enough.