As you've noticed, not many people are even aware that green cheeks have subspecies!!! And as far as I am aware, green cheek hybrids are *NOT* sterile. If any green cheek hybrids are sterile, then they would be sterile if hybridized to the larger conures (suns, nandays, patagonians, etc). I have come acrosss someone selling 2nd gen green cheek x black cap hybrids, which I believe are 75% green cheek to 25% black cap. I don't even want to know how many green cheek hybrids are out there that contain black cap and/or maroon bellied blood in them.... not to even consider the green cheek subspecies hybrids!
Here in America, not many breeders even paid attention to coloration, let alone subspecies, unless they were trying to breed for specific traits... as such, hybridization has occurred! I'm not entirely sure that there are any pure subspecies of green cheek conures left here. Most of the breeders I've seen that even bothered trying to keep the subspecies pure are those in England.
The red stomach really doesn't mean much.... I mean, using that link you provided, if you take a look at the two
P. m. molinae clinging to the wires, one has hardly any red at all and the other has a small patch of red - vs the
P. m. molinae at top-center of page has a rather large patch of red.
As far as yellow-side being a mutation and not a subspecies? Not true. The yellow-side subspecies is P. m. sordida, aka the Sordid Conure. Another classification this one goes under is
P. m. hypxantha. It's from my understanding that the opaline (aka "yellow-sided") mutation came from this subspecies.
For the longest time I thought green cheek conures were pretty boring! If I had to choose between a sun and a green cheek, it would be hands down, a green cheek conure! But if I were to look for a small conure, it wouldn't have been a green cheek.... that is, until I started to notice a difference in coloration between green cheeks. What really threw me for a loop however was a "blue butted" (aka blue vent) opaline (yellowside) green cheek conure. The blue was so vibrant that it just flabbergasted me! I had taken notice before, such as the chest/neck region being yellow or white (a difference between subspecies) and pondered about it, but my interest in subspecies (and knowledge) didn't really take off until I saw that one bird.
(opaline with a kind of blue butt)
Untitled | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
I've also seen some green cheek conures a few years back at a bird expo that were *huge* compared to some others that I've seen! I mean, green cheeks typically average around 60 grams, but these guys looked like they were closer to 80 grams in size.
Emily, I don't know enough about the different subspecies to be able to say for sure which subspecies a green cheek is (Cookie does appear differently than the P. m. molinae's on that site), or to say that a bird takes after one subspecies more than another... but I am curious to know how much Cookie weighs.
