The Red Canary by Tim Birkhead

Author:Tim Birkhead
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

Mixed Encounters

The term ‘mule’ originally referred exclusively to the cross-bred offspring of a donkey and a horse but has since been applied to hybrid plants, hybrid fish and in the bird-keeping fancy to the offspring of a canary and a finch. Textile workers, many of whom were also canary-mule breeders, even referred to one of their machines as a ‘mule’ because it comprised a mixture of Joseph Arkwright’s warp machine and Mrs Hargrave’s hand jenny. ‘Hybrid’ is similar to mule in that it, too, once had a very specific meaning, identifying the offspring of a female domestic pig and wild boar, but it now refers to the result of cross-breeding any two species of plant or animal. The term hybrid comes from hubris – insolence against the gods – reflecting the ancient view that there was something improper about inter-specific crosses. German bird keepers used the term ‘bastard’ to describe both mules and hybrids and it regularly appears in Duncker’s papers with reference to red siskin mules. Bastard was also used in Germany to describe people of mixed race.

Hans Duncker must have known that the terms ‘mule’ and ‘sterility’ invariably went hand in hand, and what was true for the mixed offspring of horses and donkeys was also true for other inter-specific crosses – including canaries and finches. Nonetheless, he hoped that they could somehow either leapfrog or ride roughshod over this general rule and generate fertile offspring from canaries crossed with red siskins. Duncker was confident that he could persuade red siskins to breed with his canaries and produce red mules. He had it on good authority that the Spaniards, both in South America and on the Canary Islands, had a long history of doing this. Indeed, ever since canaries had been bred in captivity, they had produced mules with other finches, mixtures that must have originally arisen by accident when female canaries and male finches were kept in the same aviary. One of the earliest examples was a beautiful goldfinch mule painted by Lazarus Röting in 1610. At that time only male finches were kept – for their song – and as the breeding season progressed these birds must have felt more and more like men in singles bars whose threshold for what is acceptable in a partner declines rapidly as closing time approaches. For a male finch, mating with a female canary was better than not mating at all.

When the breeders of mules and hybrids are successful they produce what are effectively new organisms. Some bird keepers find this prospect irresistible, not least because many crosses are stunningly beautiful in both feather and voice. As soon as it became widely known that creating mules was a possibility, bird keepers set about trying to breed them. By the time Hervieux wrote his book in the early 1700s, mule breeding was extremely popular:

It being natural for Man never to be satisfy’d with what he has, but to despise what is in his Power, and ardently to desire whatsoever is out of his Power; curious Persons at present act accordingly in respect of Canary-Birds.

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