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My mum's been telling me that she has a half magpie/half crow hanging around her garden.
I thought she was imagining things, until today when I saw it myself.
It does indeed look like a cross breed half magpie half crow.
It's base colour is black and where a magpie should be white it is a speckly white. Quite strange looking.
It has a crow as it's boy/girlfriend. Mum says they are always together.
Do you think it could be a crossbreed? Can/do birds do that sort of thing?
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Cross breed? No I doubt it. I have seen quite a few of the crows you speak about with white patches in amongst the majority of black plumage being the best way that I can describe them. I dont know what causes this but, I am seeing more and more of this in carrion crows. Would like to know the answer to this one.
I believe that is what defines a species - unable to breed with another species
It is not so much unable to breed together but that they don't. There are some quite odd effects . For example a Hearing Gull and Black headed Gull in UK a different species and do not actually interbreed. But the Hearing Gull breeds with an American Gull which breeds with another and so on until it turns into Black Headed Gull. There are other examples of the same sort of thing. In Scotland Carrion and Hooded Crows can interbred.
I still do not think that it is interbreeding between a Magpie and a Crow.
A couple of years ago there was a pair of semi-white crows that used to visit my garden. In flight they looked spectacular due to the band of white feathers along the middle of their wings. I called them Ronnie and Reggie, the Krow twins. Sadly they haven't been back lately.
Black coloured birds such as crows and blackbirds often have white feathers, a phenomenon called leucism if I recall correctly. The simplest way to tell whether it is some soft of hybrid is to look at the shape. Is it crow or magpie shaped? If it is distinctly one or the other then it is probably not a case of crossbreeding.
If you are not sure, take a photograph and post it here.
Our parrot is a hybrid, her mother is a Blue and gold Macaw and her father is a Greenwing Macaw. Both are from different areas of the world but can cross breed.
However, it really depends on the individual species.
With birds, as all the species are different, you get 'Hybridisation' which is what happens on the odd occasion that you can successfully mix two species together. Most of the time, Hybrid animals, like Mules (Cross between a horse and a donkey) and Ligers (Cross between Lion and Tiger) are infertile, as a result of a different genetic mixture, which leaves them missing a chromosome.
Magpies and Crows are both members of the Corvid family, but I havent heard any reports on them cross breeding.
Lorikeets are parrots, and it is possible to mate different species of Lorikeet together, but not to other types of parrot.
You can potentially cross breed species as long as they are closely related. For example- there are around 9 different species of Lovebird, and Lovebird Hybrids are relatively common.
I thought Blackbirds and thrushes could cross breed? Certainly some of the ducks can. I have seen cross bred malards and aylesbury ducks and certainly a few years ago there was much concern about a duck, cannot remember which one, becoming extinct due to cross breeding with I think the Madarin?
peedee
ps it was the White Headed duck of Spain which was breeding with the Ruddy Duck. The former is an endangered species and the Spanish wanted all the Ruddy ducks, which are not native to Europe, shot.
peedee
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