Stefan Shakespeare, founder of the pollsters YouGov, has a daughter who kindly gave our daughter two canaries some time ago. I do not like birds to be kept in cages. I wish they were wild and flying free. But when they suddenly appeared in the house, it was a fait accompli, so we tried to make them content in the dining room. Our children played loud music in their presence, mainly Xfm and Virgin, and were rewarded with vigorous singing.

Last year, one of the birds died. The survivor, a pretty yellow creature, was then alone for most of the day. He fell silent and moved less. There was nobody, and nothing, for him to sing to. Then I noticed something strange. Whenever I brought in the radio from the kitchen next door and tuned it to Radio 2, as I frequently do for company, he started chirruping, warbling and tweeting again — so long as it was music coming out, not speech.

This behaviour has become quite predictable, and I have started to observe what he does and does not like. On the day I am writing this, for example, he remained completely silent, as I thought he would, when Sarah Montague was interviewing Brian Sibley on Today in that deliciously hoity-toity voice of hers. Any form of speech, however fetching, leaves the bird completely cold. He carried on silently pecking at his cuttlebone after I had switched over to Terry Wogan, who was ruminating on TOGs and Katie Melua. And then came Young Hearts Run Free, that great joyous hit by the Alabama soul singer Candi Staton, and the bird's head jerked up and he started singing so beautifully, it pricked my eyes.

Yesterday, he was silent with Ken Bruce's daily pop quiz, but accompanied most of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which, though long and complex, contains a similarly strong melody. Cheerful sing-along tunes are what he likes best: The Beatles's Magical Mystery Tour has gone down particularly well. Other forms of music leave him silent and apparently unengaged — as does that loop of birdsong where Oneword used to be, and which he presumably interprets as rivals on his territory.

Many other captive creatures have responded positively to music broadcast on the radio or played to them by some other method. Years ago, I wrote about a Northumberland vet who reported that Classic FM calmed a stallion recovering from intestinal surgery, a Shropshire pig farmer who played similar music to his sows when they were farrowing, and an NFU survey that showed chickens became healthier and less aggressive, and laid more eggs, when exposed to music (chart hits, middle-of-the-road and classical). Only last week there was a similar story from Belfast Zoo, with elephants displaying less boredom and agitation when exposed to Strauss, Elgar and Beethoven. But does our canary make a free choice when he sings along to Radio 2? And is he typical? According to Simon Tammam of Poole, in Dorset, who has been an international canary judge for 11 years and has been breeding them since 1960: "Canaries will respond to music they've got used to. There is no specific type they tend to like more than others. Normally, they are exposed to different forms of music when little. I have about 100 canaries and I have Classic FM on all the time. They seem to like that. It calms them down." It seems niche audiences exist in avian as well as human kind: perhaps we all like the music we grew up with.

paul.donovan@sunday-times.co.uk

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