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Pheonix is our Male Parent Reared
Display Perigrine x Gyr x Saker Falcon.
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Mans interference with nature by cross-breeding has produced
hybrids and even tribrids.
Falcons are more closely related than many suspected, the
heavy northern Gyrfalcon and Asiatic Saker being especially
closely related, so that they may interbreed naturally to
create the so called "Altay" (or Altai Saker) falcon.
Artificial hybrid falcons have been available since the late
1970s, and enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity in the UK
in the 1990s. Originally "created" to remove suspicions of
having nest-robbed wild peregrines (by demonstrating without doubt that they were
captive-bred), hybrids have
assumed an important but controversial role in
falconry worldwide. Some combinations appear to lend
themselves to certain styles of flight, for example:
The gyr/peregrine is well-suited to game-hawking.
The peregrine/lanner has proved useful in keeping birds off
airport runways to prevent bird strikes: peregrines fly too
far for this job, and lanners do not fly far enough for this
job.
But hybrid falcons are not the panacea that some breeders
would have
customers believe. Many proponents of hybrids often cite
"hybrid vigour" as the reason that these birds seem to do so
well, despite the fact that crossing two non-inbred lines is
more likely to lead to out breeding depression (i.e., a
negative effect), and could never prompt hybrid vigour, a
phenomenon that boosts genetic integrity and heterogeneity
in lines that have been too
heavily inbred by judicious selection.
| Species |
Weight |
Hatch Date |
| |
|
|
|
Falco Peregrinus
|
2lb 1 oz |
24-05-2009 |
|