Sparrowing

The hawk's owl shows the ventral and flank plumage

Sparrow is a technical term from ornithology and poultry farming. This describes the plumage drawings in the chest, abdomen and flank areas of birds, which are dark, transversely banded on a light, yellowish or whitish background. They are similar in color and structure to those of the sparrowhawk ( Accipiter nisus ).

Chicken

Chest drawing of the cuckoo

The sparrowing is available as a color and drawing variant in very many chicken breeds. The contrasting is defined differently in the respective races. The term "Sparrowhawk drawing" is typical of the German-language name, whereas the other European languages speak of "cuckoo drawing".

drawing

Cracked chicken feather

A disheveled feather shows alternating darker and lighter stripes. The border between the bands is a bit fuzzy by definition. In several races, there is a very strong contrasting banding that are not considered Sperberung but according to the breed standard as striation is referred to as the rock Plymouth . Genetically, however, the sparrow and stripes can be traced back to the same gene mutation, with different characteristics due to the speed of feather growth. The so-called speckling in chickens differs from the sparrowing in that no uniform bands are formed, but regular and symmetrical spots. Since the spots are genetically defined as black, they can also be white if they are phenotypically white. In other bird species, the terms are often both used for a banding (e.g. the jay ).

Differences in chicks

An important reason to include the sparrowing in farm chickens in the past is the ability of young sparrowed chicks to show sex-related differences in the pen drawing (especially a light spot on the chickens head). This eliminates the time-consuming and error-prone separation due to other features.

colour

The classic sparrowing is black-and-white with a genetic silver factor and with all feathers. The gold factor changes the color to yellowish, reddish or brownish on a light background. Dilution genes or factors, such as the lavender factor, lighten the dark streaks.