page_title: Gamebird hybrids
section_title: Pheasant and grouse hybrids
hierarchical_section_title: Gamebird hybrids / Pheasant and grouse hybrids
caption_attribution_description: English: Own work. Lady Amhersts Pheasant × Golden Pheasant (left) and hybrid of Black Grouse × Hazel Grouse (right), Rothschild Museum, Tring. Photo taken of specimens at Rothschild Zoological Museum, Tring, England.
context_page_description: Gamebird hybrids are the result of crossing species of game birds, including ducks, with each other and with domestic poultry. These hybrid species may sometimes occur naturally in the wild or more commonly through the deliberate or inadvertent intervention of humans.
  Charles Darwin described hybrids of game birds and domestic fowl in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication:
  Mr. Hewitt, who has had great experience in crossing tame cock-pheasants with fowls belonging to five breeds, gives as the character of all 'extraordinary wildness'; but I have myself seen one exception to this rule. Mr. S. J. Salter who raised a large number of hybrids from a bantam-hen by Gallus sonneratii, states that 'all were exceedingly wild.' [...] utterly sterile male hybrids from the pheasant and the fowl act in the same manner, "their delight being to watch when the hens leave their nests, and to take on themselves the office of a sitter." [...] Mr. Hewitt gives it as a general rule with fowls, that crossing the breed increases their size.
context_section_description: Hybrids have been obtained between the "ornamental" species of pheasants e.g. Lady Amherst's, silver and Reeves's pheasants.
  Natural pheasant and grouse hybrids have been reported:
  Capercaillie or wood grouse (Tetrao urogallus) and black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) in the UK
  Dusky or blue grouse (Dendragapus obscurus) and common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) near Portland, Oregon, United States
  Sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) and prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido) 
  Willow ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus) and spruce grouse (Falcipennis canadensis)
caption: Hybrid pheasant (left) and hybrid of black grouse × hazel grouse (right), Rothschild Museum, Tring
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