Majorca's world champion birds

2020-02-02 04:01:01 Palma By Majorca Daily Bulletin reporter

Majorcan Àngel Rosselló was the winner of the category for hybrid birds at last month's Ornithology World Championship, which was held in Matosinhos in Portugal. The award was for a group of four birds, all a mix of a chaffinch and a canary. The birds exceeded the jury's expectations because they were identical, despite three having been born in 2018 and the fourth in 2019.

Rosselló, who is a carpenter by trade, has "fathered" more than ninety species. The birds are in cages in his courtyard. He gets up at half six each morning in order to inspect them. "It's a tough hobby, especially because you are dealing with such delicate birds, for which it is difficult to achieve a perfect result." The hybrid category, he adds, "is the most difficult because of all that is entailed in producing and raising these species of bird". The birds can fetch between 500 and 600 euros.

There were over 20,000 species at the championship. Rosselló's birds were in Portugal for fifteen days. He says that hybrids can get particularly "nervous", but the trip didn't affect them. They passed various tests for colour, design, size and shape. They obtained the highest marks for their song. In all, they won with 370 points, the highest ever score for a hybrid at an ornithology contest.

His prizes were a diploma and a medal, but he had to pay to take part. "It's quite expensive, but it is a world championship and the facilities have to be maintained for two weeks." He can't imagine a life without his birds, and his goal is to keep on improving and gaining more world medals.

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Rare hybrid bird discovered in Deep Lock Quarry Metro Park

6/27/2019 - West Side Leader

By Stephanie Walton

SUMMIT COUNTY — The conservation staff at Summit Metro Parks (SMP) is always up to something new and exciting. From releasing rare turtles back into the wild, to raising honeybees, to studying the behavior of bats and coyotes, their work routinely uncovers new information that informs ecosystem management and species protection. But one recent discovery stands out from the rest.

While studying migrant bird species in Deep Lock Quarry Metro Park and the Cuyahoga Valley, former SMP biologist Ryan Trimbath found the key to unlocking a decades-long mystery. Birders had long suspected that cerulean warblers and parula warblers were mating to create hybrid birds. Although many observers had seen birds that looked like a cross between the two species, or whose calls did not sound quite right, none of the birds in question had been captured for genetic testing.

“Documenting hybridization is important to help us understand speciation, evolution and conservation,” explained Trimbath. “Monitoring and tracking these populations helps inform management practices to protect the species.”

Cerulean warblers are a species of concern across their breeding range, with populations in Ohio declining nearly 75 percent since the 1960s due to habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as deforestation of their wintering grounds in South America. In at least one case, hybridization has resulted in the elimination of a species: blue-winged warblers replaced golden-winged warblers within 20 to 50 years of contact.

Trimbath’s three-year study, internally dubbed “The Secret Lives of Birds,” monitored the nest success rates of three species of forest-breeding songbirds: the hooded warbler, cerulean warbler and the wood thrush. During the course of his work, Trimbath was able to safely collect blood samples from two unusual-looking cerulean warblers in Deep Lock Quarry Metro Park. He then shared the samples with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where Dr. Andy Jones and Courtney Brennan conducted genetic testing that confirmed the birds were indeed cerulean/parula warbler hybrids.

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Mixed genes mix up the migrations of hybrid birds

Date:

July 22, 2014

Source:

University of British Columbia

Summary:

Mixed genes appear to drive hybrid birds to select more difficult routes than their parent species, according to new research. "Instead of taking well-trodden paths through fertile areas, these birds choose to scale mountains and cross deserts," says one of the researchers.

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