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Found this: Has anyone an idea why they are blue, why sometimes they came out yellow and blue in the same clutch and are there other subspecies of Peregrines which have also blue hands and are 100 % pure Peregrines? Also I have heard and I don“t know if it“s true, that in the States where made DNA tests with Peales from the wild and it turned out that they had gyrgenes inside?
As for feet coloring, so much of that is genetics, plain and simple. Its sort of like talking about eye color in adult Goshawks. Sure, a lot of them are red, but a lot are not. There are, of course, ways you can attempt to enhance the yellowing of the feet and we all that chicken heads or docs are good at bringing on color to a birds food that is less than bright or yellow, as does sunlight play a role as well in the production of carotene pigments in their feet. But sometimes these attempts simply fall on deaf ears so to speak, because the genetics of the bird will only allow them to color out in their time. Otherwise even at wild nests we would see nothing but yellow feet, which of course on Peale's and some other Peregrine subspecies we do not see this all the time.
The color of feet varies in passage tundra peregrines, I was told diet plays a role in the determining color. Some I saw were slightly greenish, others were very yellow and some were greyish.
If blue feet, genuinely blue feet, occur in certain peregrine subspecies, but not, or only very rarely in peregrinus peregrinus, I'm interested to understand why. I'm unconvinced by the argument that it's entirely food related, and believe early stage 'blue footedness' to be a genetic trait. Unfortunately I've never discovered the origins of Blaine's 'Bluefoot', although of course there's every chance it might have been an american import, perhaps even a peales, but it occurs to me that blue footed peregrines were noteworthy at that time. Since Blaine's time, captive breeding has brought together peregrines of various sub-species, not to mention falcons of differing species, and it seems we might get some indication through captive breeding, of one possible origin of blue feet in peregrines, and a better understanding of the peregrine herself.
Hi Greg, I can definately help you on this one, eyass peregrines have yellow leggs. The saturation of the yellow can be different depending upon prey availability. Its the same with the cere, bright yellow. Many years ago when I was on shap I can across a falconer with a cadge of what I thought were peregrines; these bird were different in one respect, they all had blue/grey legs. I was told the birds were all hybrids but not sure of the other parent.
Saw a group of young in a nest last year in the Aleutian Islands with one blue feet, one green feet, and one yellow footed Tiercel. So there you go, it is down to the phenotype of individual bird and nothing more.
From Birds of Prey talk:
Seems no one really knows and all have their own ideas.
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