# Can different birds species cross breed?



## Hezbez

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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## 96299

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.

Steve


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## lifeson

I believe that is what defines a species - unable to breed with another species


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## safariboy

lifeson said:


> 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.


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## SpeedyDux

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.

SD


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## Sandy_Saunders

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.

Sandy


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## rayrecrok

Hi.

That's Dinosaurs for you. stick to their own seemed to have worked for millions of years.


Ray.


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## BillCreer

Hi,

Magpies are members of the Jackdaw family so they are quite far removed from crows.


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## Jezport

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.


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## peedee

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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## Jezport

peedee said:


> 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


It is very common for Ducks and Chickens to be cross bred. I believe that some ducks cross breed while in the wild as well as being cross bred by human intervention.


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## LittleGreyCat

Jezport said:


> It is very common for Ducks and Chickens to be cross bred. I believe that some ducks cross breed while in the wild as well as being cross bred by human intervention.


This painted a bizzare picture of a Ducken or a Chickuck


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## LittleGreyCat

From Wikipedia



> A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.


So it is fertility which is the defining factor.

And also, as referred to previously



> In biology, a ring species is a connected series of neighboring populations, each of which can interbreed with closely sited related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" species. Such non-breeding-though-genetically-connected "end" populations may co-exist in the same region thus closing a "ring".
> 
> Ring species provide important evidence of evolution in that they illustrate what happens over time as populations genetically diverge, and are special because they represent in living populations what normally happens over time between long deceased ancestor populations and living populations, in which the intermediates have become extinct. Richard Dawkins observes that ring species "are only showing us in the spatial dimension something that must always happen in the time dimension."[1]
> 
> Ring species also present an interesting case of the species problem, for those who seek to divide the living world into discrete species. After all, all that distinguishes a ring species from two separate species is the existence of the connecting populations - if enough of the connecting populations within the ring perish to sever the breeding connection, the ring species' distal populations will be recognized as two distinct species.


Although I was a biologist a very long time ago I had not come across the concept of a ring species.

Fascinating 

Cheers

LGC


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## gramor

Jezport said:


> peedee said:
> 
> 
> 
> peedee
> 
> 
> 
> It is very common for Ducks and Chickens to be cross bred.
Click to expand...

Just to make sure that nobody misunderstood your comment, ducks can crossbreed with ducks, chickens can crossbreed with chickens........ducks cannot crossbreed with chickens! 

Some drakes have the inclination to try it on with chickens which can cause injury and death to the chicken.


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## Jezport

gramor said:


> Jezport said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> peedee said:
> 
> 
> 
> peedee
> 
> 
> 
> It is very common for Ducks and Chickens to be cross bred.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Just to make sure that nobody misunderstood your comment, ducks can crossbreed with ducks, chickens can crossbreed with chickens........ducks cannot crossbreed with chickens!
> 
> Some drakes have the inclination to try it on with chickens which can cause injury and death to the chicken.
Click to expand...

Thats correct, but I was amused by the reply so let it run to see what came of it :lol:


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## gramor

Hezbez said:


> It's base colour is black and where a magpie should be white it is a speckly white. Quite strange looking.


I suspect it's a fledgling, they can have a mottled appearance and the partner/girlfriend is actually an adult. One way to confirm is to look and see if it has a the same well developed tail feathers as the other one.


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## Sandy_Saunders

BillCreer said:


> Hi,
> 
> Magpies are members of the Jackdaw family so they are quite far removed from crows.


Hi Bill

Magpies, Jackdaws and Crows are all part of the Corvid family. However, the only interbreeding that I know of within this group is Carrion Crows with Hooded Crows.

Cheers

Sandy


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## DTPCHEMICALS

Birds do interbreed!

Birds of a different species will interbreed,that is how we get Hybrids!

But this depends on their habitat and if there are none of there own species about.(caged birds will interbreed).

Dave p


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## ramblingon

I have often speculated that white feathering can be caused by lead poisoning ( a bird that survived being shot at).


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## gramor

DTPCHEMICALS said:


> Birds do interbreed!
> Birds of a different species will interbreed,that is how we get Hybrids!


Pigeons are a good example, but they have a common lineage which allows the offspring to be viable and to reproduce.

There is a book called Avian Hybrids of the World which details various attemps in the last century to interbreed across bird species. Majority of these experiments have resorted to artificial insemination for obvious reasons, but the results have had little commercial value.


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## BillCreer

Sandy_Saunders said:


> BillCreer said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Magpies are members of the Jackdaw family so they are quite far removed from crows.
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Bill
> 
> Magpies, Jackdaws and Crows are all part of the Corvid family. However, the only interbreeding that I know of within this group is Carrion Crows with Hooded Crows.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Sandy
Click to expand...

Hi Sandy,
Yes you are correct and I would have made more sense if I had put "larger" in front of crows.

I was trying to say was that Magpies are more closely related to the small Corvids like the Jackdaws and Choughs.


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## sparky20006

I once visited a back street bar in Soho and a Chinese bird and English bird were having a good try. 8O


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## trevorf

Are you sure it wasn't a Hooded crow that you saw?

link to Hooded Crow

They are quite common in the Scottish highlands and islands, sometimes seen further south.

Trevor


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## 4maddogs

Sandy_Saunders said:


> BillCreer said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Magpies are members of the Jackdaw family so they are quite far removed from crows.
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Bill
> 
> Magpies, Jackdaws and Crows are all part of the Corvid family. However, the only interbreeding that I know of within this group is Carrion Crows with Hooded Crows.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Sandy
Click to expand...

Carrion and Hooded crows are (until now) the same species. There are moves to split them, but, for now, they are the same bird!


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