Society, Spice, or Hybrid?

[Nerien]

Keep looking at the chicks, keep trying to read up on the genetics, just doesn't seem to add up.

Both parents are pied, as you can see, Mom is the dark one, Dad is the lighter one, and is actually lighter than he looks in the photo. Chicks have no white at all, and both upper and lower beak is dark. But I can find so few pictures of "Spice-icities". Nor anything that says society beaks change color as they age, or that the pied shows up later, or disappears. There were two Spices in the cage, tho never saw them near Mom, and Dad was always rather protective of her.

Both Mom and Dad have several white stripes/feathers in their wings.

What do you think?

[wellingtoncdm]

Could the spice finches have laid in the society's nest?

[Jeff McKee]

Just based on the beak, I think you can rule out that it is Society. Society Finches have a two colour beak. (except white ones).

Both adult Society Finches are split to pied (white feathers on wings and the white throat bar on the dark bird). The young one does not show pied. With the parents being split to pied, only one young bird in four would not have some pied.

Genetics from parents (Y = Yes, N = No)
Y Y = full pied
Y N = split pied
N Y = split pied
N N = no pied

Again, this somewhat supports that the young one is not a bi-product of the parents.

I have a pair of Society's. One light brown and one dark. They produce birds that look like the mother and birds that look like the father. I'm not too up on my Society genetics.

On another note, your Society finches have a very distinctive head collar and then a distinctive coloured chest bar. Quite attractive. Many Society Finches have a mottled chest.

I just googled SPICE FINCH CHICKS and came up with a pic of what I think are parents and chicks. The chicks show similar colouring (not quite as dark on the back) and do not have the mottled chest. I suspected the mottled chest will come later (after a moult).

[Nerien]

Could the spice finches have laid in the society's nest?

Have started wondering about that. Have not seen the Spices doing any "illicit activity", while the Society's were quite blatant about it, but then maybe the Spices were just discreet.

Just based on the beak, I think you can rule out that it is Society. Society Finches have a two colour beak.

That is my #1 point. Found only rare photos of Society-Spice hybrids, they have shown only dark beaks. And no pied, but it has been so few photos that that isn't reliable. Saw one hybrid chick photo, not a good one, that looked like these guys. He actually does have a striping/pattern on the chest feathers, and on the far lower underbody, it's just faint, and does not really photo well. If you enlarge the pics of the chick through the bars, you can kind of see it. It doesn't help that it was a cooler morning and he's all fluffed up.

The genetics of pied in Society almost entirely say it is a recessive gene, which means the parents are not split, in order for a recessive to show it has to be homozygous, or "self" I guess you call it in finch terms. Pied is also supposed to be additive, the more pied parents/generations, the more white shows up, which actually indicates more than a single gene location is adding into this coloration pattern. So pied parents should always product pied offspring. Have found one site that indicates there is indeed also a Dominant Pied gene, if this has not been determined before, then it cannot be that common, so how did I get two completely random Dominant Pied birds from two completely separate places? (different states, one private shop, one major chain).

I'm thinking it's either a hybrid, or else that one of my Spices is actually a female. We know at least one is a male definitely (behavior and song), but they are so hard to tell apart we cannot be sure both are male.

But as you could guess, or I would not have asked, I don't think it's a Society chick. Guess time will tell if it's a Spice or a "Spice-icity".

Poor Rusty. He has worked so hard at raising those eggs and the chicks, and they're not his.

[Meagan83]

Looks like a baby spice finch. Here is a baby spice finch
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53637749@N00/6127973978
Looks like yours to me. Plus, societies usually have two tone beaks: upper mandible dark, lower mandible light.

[DanteD716]

Deffinatly is a spice baby.. But what a cutie congrats!!!

[Nerien]

Do you think he is a fully Spice finch, or maybe a Spice-Society hybrid? His wings are much darker than my Spice finches, which have a reddish tint to their dark brown parts, whereas this guy/girl is darker and chocolate brown, not mahogany brown like the Spices. But then, he is just past 5 weeks old.

I have noticed that his tail is shaped flat/blunt like the Spice, where the Societies' tails are pointed. So I now have no doubt that the Society male is not his father, but I still wonder about the mother.

I did not see any Spice-Spice mating activity, nor did I see any Spice-Society activity, only Society-Society. After finding four dropped & broken eggs on the bottom of the cage, I found the Society hen trying to sit on an unbroken egg on the bottom of the cage. If she found someone else's egg laying loose in the cage, not in a nest, is it likely she would have tried to sit on it?

It is so hard to tell my two Spices apart, I know one is male, but not sure that both are because you can't tell who's singing unless the other were to sit right next to him at the same time. Thinking about putting a nest box in with the Spices to see if anything happens, that would tell us for sure if eggs started appearing, but if Hopper, who had the bad legs & wings, and has passed on, and Eaglet are full Spices, then probably I should not let the Spices breed again. Their leg bands are the same code with numbers 28 and 64, so chances are that they are related, and they were not intended to breed.

It's just driving us crazy to figure out who/what Eaglet is, and the thought of waiting months for him/her to finally get adult feathers to let us know for sure is just too long!

[finchmix22]

Looks like a Spice baby to me. My Society's babies don't look all one color from pied parents. The beak is not that dark either in Society's. Here are pics of my Spice as babies and juveniles.