# More about mosaics



## jbangelfish (Mar 22, 2008)

I went to Huntley's site and found something interesting. His site is very interesting overall and has alot of genetic info and some great photos.

Anyway, it seems that my own theory about mosaics has become a reality. I have suggested that we have found a new type of mosaic that is different than the old two sperm types, which are extremely rare and very radical in appearance. These were the birds that were as extreme as two breeds together (he shows a chinese owl/roller which looks to be half and half) or others that were silky on one side and normal on the other, etc.

The new type, described by Gibson, is called somatic mosaic, if I remember correctly. It is as simple as having a red feather on a blue pigeon and many of these have come to be reality. Some are more dramatic than others and have larger patches of mis-matching color, making them the more striking mosaics that we have been seeing with some regularity.

I don't think that the genetic makeup has been sorted out yet or that anyone can tell you exactly how to make one but I was just pleased to find that my idea wasn't completely off base. This type of mosaic tends to present itself more frequently among certain families of birds and some breeders have produced several of them from one bird.

He went on to say that the yellow canary came from one bird that was a green canary with one yellow feather, bred back to it's offspring until they could be made completely yellow. Actually, I'd call that case a simple pied (or migratory white) and not an example of mosaicism, much like pieds began with mallard ducks (white wingtips, enlarged rings, etc. until they become pure white). In green birds (canaries, gouldian finches, parakeets), yellow is the color of pied markings. Diamond doves early pieds also began with just a white feather or two and it took breeding them together to get the more wild pieds that you see now. These just show up from inbreeding and is how so many white varieties of chickens, ducks and others came to be. To get white in birds that are normally green, you first need them to mutate to blue. White on green would or should be considered true mosaic.

The somatic mosaic would be two colors that normally do not show themselves together, mostly red and blue. They have been described in many combinations with black, yellow, etc. I don't know where this puts the bird that has a check wing and a blue bar wing or blue with ash red etc. but it seems that we are coming to understand that there will be a way to make such dramatic combinations that show themselves as mosaics.


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