Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 10:31 pm Post subject: pied eye colour
i have a nest of five green pied kakariki, three are very nice pieds other two not so well marked . they are about one week from fledging. The 3 well marked pieds have red eyes the other 2 normal colour. The red eyes have been evident from hatching and they haven't changed at this stage. The parents are green pied cock, cinnamon pied hen. Has anybody come across this before? If so any help would be greatly appreciated.
with a torch looking into the box the eyes probably are plum. they are different to any others i have seen. i can not work out where the eye colour has come from. this pair have had 2 clutches before, all eyes were normal,thou none of the chicks were as pied as the current 3 with the plum eyes.
When you are looking with a torch in the eyes of (some) pieds they have always a level of ruddyness. This level varrys just like the amount of pied areas in the plumage. Studys of the eyes of the Danish pied (DEC) in Budgies have prove that the inside (choroid) has pied areas and is typical of recessive pieds.
Greg has proposed it earlyer that the Black Eyed Clear might be a recessive pied. Maybe this is a/the proof.
Peter,
I was wondering whether the different eye colour has any relationship to the pied modifiers that combine in the pied mutation to produce the various types of pieds. We have recently combined the Mottled pied and recessive pied mutations and come up with some interesting results. The top beak on the bird we produced is normal with the darker area, whilst the bottom beak is totally clear similar to that of the Black eyed clear. The bird also shows a mottled pied effect on it's back while the wings and tail feathers display normal recessive pied traits.
Perhaps the birds Wyndarra has produced also display a new pied modifier that can in time further enhance the recessive pied. To date all of our Black eyed clear birds have bred true to the recessive inheritance. Combining a Black eyed clear to a normal bird produces normal and pied birds. These pieds are very similar to the normal recessive mutation. I have included a pic of the combination pieds.
thanks peter and greg for your replies. my guess is that once these pieds have fledged and matured their eye colour in normal light will infact be darker than normal more like the black eyed clears, but when viewed in bright sun or torch light will show plum or red in colour. another interesting point, the young have come from parents that show very little pied markings, the cock has one patch of yellow feathers on the backof his head and a patch on his rump, hen pied flights only. i am working with a couple of these birds that show yellow on the head area ,so far the results have been good ,well marked ofsping.
Wyndara, is it possible to show a picture of these pieds?
Kaka-riki wrote:
Peter,
I was wondering whether the different eye colour has any relationship to the pied modifiers that combine in the pied mutation to produce the various types of pieds.
When I compare siblings, the amount of pied varrys proportionally along with the eye colour. The darker the eyes the more pied. However, when I compare unrelated birds with equal eyes, the amount of pied seems to have no influence. So, I guess that the modifiers, rather than minor pieds, play an important role in the eye colour.
Kaka-riki wrote:
Combining a Black eyed clear to a normal bird produces normal and pied birds. These pieds are very similar to the normal recessive mutation.
The pieds from these parings are half the Black eyed clear and therefore heterozygous. Should we view them as SF dom pieds?
Peter,
The confusion at the momemt is what actually produces the Black eyed clear. If as some claim, this mutation is a combination of the recessive and dominant pied mutations, is it possible that the pied birds produced from a normal and Black eyed pairing are in fact just recessive pieds.
If we pair to birds that are basically "split" to the recessive pied it is also possible to produce medium to heavy pied birds. There is no set rules on how the pied in recessive seems to work. Therefore it is possible that this same trait appears in the normal to black eyed pairings.
The black eyed clear mutation works as a recessive inheritance in that pairing two normal birds split to the mutation will produce a percentage of clear yellow birds. That makes things even more confusing if the theory about recessive and dominant pied combining is in fact true.
My personal belief is that the black eyed clear is simply yet another form of pied. It works on it's own and is simply a combination of several pied modifiers working together. It makes more sense when you consider there are so many variations in the Kakariki mutations already. As you can see by the picture I posted if we combine some of these mutations the end results are yet again different to the pieds we would expect.
peter i will take some pics as soon as i can and post them on the site . at the moment i go to work in the dark and get home in the dark so abit hard to get pics.
When they are both 100% yellow, most of the offspring will be yellow. But when they have green spots it depends. The BEC is probably a combination of 1 mayor gene and a lot of modifiers eventually accompanied by (a) dominant or recessive minor pied(s).
It is like building blocks. Imagine each parent as a wall of 10 blocks. 8 yellow and 2 green. To produce a new wall choose 5 blocks of each wall randomly. The outcome can varry with a yelow/green ratio of 6/4 to 10/0.
PETER we were correct about the eye colour, two of the 3 good pieds have just fledged both showing much darker eyes than normal the plum colour was only evident with torch light. i will keep a close watch as they mature. also peter have you made any progress with the red inthe tail feathers. these two fledglings have brought it to my attention again as they both are displaying it. the red seems to appear randomly.
also peter have you made any progress with the red inthe tail feathers. these two fledglings have brought it to my attention again as they both are displaying it. the red seems to appear randomly.
I have done some interesting findings about the red. Dirk Van den Abeele from the MUTAVI group assured me that this kind of red is extendable. Also Terry Martin makes mention of a locus that controls red suffusion trough the plumage wich is highly susceptible for enhancement. It should be of a dominant inheritance. Aviculturists call it red or orange fronted. http://numbat.murdoch.edu.au/birds/ACVSc/pg000013.htm
All we need to do is to collect the birds that show the most red and combine them. Actually we have to collect modifiers into one bird. It also inherits intermediair. Pairing a bird with much red to one with less then the red will be around in the middle. So, it is important to pair the best birds otherwise you go down hill fast. I think the best example in enhancing the red is the Bourke. The original wildcolour had a red that was limited to the head, belly and chest. Nowadays the red of the normals is extended to the back and wings.
I have paired the female with the red in the tail to one with no red. The first round they produced birds with less to no red. The second round there was a bird with the same degree of red like the mother. This one I'm gonna keep for further pairings.
Brett, Peter,
As Brett, has noticed when he last visited our aviaries we have several black eyed clear birds that are now coming through with red in the tail feathers. However, I recently pulled a young black eyed clear that was on it's own and have been hand raising it for a couple of weeks.
As the bird is feathering up it is obtaining a distinct red patch (similar to a pied marking) right in the middle of it's back. Once the bird has fully feathered, and if the colour is maintained I will post some pics of this bird on the site.
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