 Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forest, dry savanna, and subtropical or tropical dry shrubland.The black-throated canary was formerly placed in the genus "Serinus" but phylogenetic analysis using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences found that the genus was polyphyletic.The genus was therefore split and a number of species including the black-throated canary were moved to the resurrected genus "Crithagra".