Aus der Sunday Times: 14.06.05
"Weird cross a world first
17jul05
THOUSANDS of Australian families have galahs or cockatiels as pets, but no one has ever combined the two.
That's because the two parrot species have never bred together – until now.
The world's first cross-breeding happened recently in Brewarrina, in outback New South Wales.
The young bird that's caused all the fuss, the only one of its type in the world, is worth a small fortune.
The parent cockatiel is about a third of the size of the parent galah, which makes the fact that they've crossed especially interesting.
According to the editor of Talking Birds newspaper, Lloyd Marshall, no one in bird-breeding circles would have thought it possible.
"It's like someone crossing a bull with a goat. It's just not even thinkable," he said.
The woman who bred the bird is Nikki Wann and the way it happened was even stranger than fiction.
Mrs Wann had a 12-year-old male galah in a small aviary with five female cockatiels and six male cockatiels.
Three pairs of cockatiels were breeding happily, but Mrs Wann got the shock of her life when she walked past the cage one day and saw a decidedly different-looking bird sitting on a perch.
"It was a young bird and obviously a cross between the galah and a light-yellow coloured six-year-old cockatiel, with the parent birds definitely bonded and together all the time," she said.
Mr Marshall said the event was particularly weird because there were plenty of cockatiels in the aviary where it happened, so the hen could have mated with one of its own kind, but instead chose the much larger galah.
"Obviously, the galah was more appealing, or maybe the male cockatiels in the aviary just didn't appeal to the hen for some unknown reason," he said.
Mr Marshall has contacted experts all over the world and none has heard of a galah breeding with a cockatiel.
"It's like something straight out of fantasy land and the way it happened is amazing," he said.
"Over the years, various types of cockatoos have been crossed, but they're all roughly around the same size, whereas the cockatiel is tiny by comparison, about double the size of a budgie.
"The cockatiel, which is also known as a weero or quarrion, is like a miniature cockatoo to look at, and it has always been assumed that it was a species of its own."
The young bird is about twice the size of a cockatiel, with a galah's body shape and greyish all over.
It has an orange galah-style crest, a dusty orange chest, deep orange cheek patches, and wings that are like a cockatiel's in colour, but are shaped like a galah's.
Mrs Wann took the bird inside to hand-feed it so that it would become tame and become a pet.
"He's very quiet and friendly, and I've been offered $15,000 for him, but people have told me he's worth a lot more because he's the only one in the world," she said.
"And it would have been a really tight fit for the galah to get into the log (nest)."
Hybrids, the result of cross-breeding two different species, may be acceptable for dogs, where the resulting "hybrid vigour" is in big demand, but it's a huge no-no for aviary birds.
Hybrid cockatoos are the result of cross-breeding two species, with the offspring usually infertile."
Hier nochmal der Link
http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,15950514%5E949,00.html
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