Abstract
WHAT appears like a very striking case of reversion in a species-hybrid is related, in the Avicultural Magazine for September, p. 220, by A. Anderson, who describes a hybrid macaw bird in New Zealand this year between a male of the red-and-yellow and a female of the blue-and-yellow species. As one parent is red and the other yellow below, it is not surprising that the hybrid young bird shows both these colours on the under-surface; what is strange is that the back is bluish-green, for the male is red here and the female blue, so that the green tint must be due to a return to a coloration ancestral in macaws, most of which are as a matter of fact green, though the more sensationally coloured species are those familiar in captivity. The case is similar to the appearance of a rufous-coloured and more ordinary bird resembling Hume's pheasant when the copper-red, white-pied Elliot's pheasant has been crossed with the Mikado pheasant, which is mostly black, and to the production of sheldrakes showing much smoky-grey pencilling similar to that on the Australasian farms when the rufous South African greyheaded sheldrake was crossed with the mainly-white European speoies, in both cases a more primitive and plain coloration appearing.
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Reversion in a Hybrid Macaw. Nature 130, 734–735 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130734d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130734d0