- Sep 23, 2014
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Mindy, the day I started this post I had seen him displaying and I saw NONE. I have gone through a lot of doubting myself until I found these two pics from last May to confirm that this bird really did have some white on his train. My thought now brings me to conclude that he was three last year and that this train was an immature. not sexually, but first full train.
I don't think that this new train is fully grown yet and it may still be going through some changes. I watched him today and he did not do any displaying. I did however get these photos as he walked by me. I will get that displaying photo as soon as I can.
I have no idea if the white comes in as it matures or if the white should be there all along the feathers development.
Here are some other views if it would help.
He loves peanuts.
I wish I could get a better view of the almost cameo colored patches he has on both pant legs surrounded by white. If you can enlarge this pic you can see some on the right inner thigh.
Phew, what a relief to see that he has at least SOME little white blotches on those train feathers, you were starting to get me worried
Those little spots of white look a lot like the one from Zaz's photo. I also see that the bird itself is very spotty pied, with the white in polka dots and broken up, rather than in big solid patches.
Now, everyone has heard me say these are not chickens, and let me say they also are not horses
It seems to me to be entirely possible that we haven't quite identified all the variants of our pied genes yet...
And to throw in one last analogy... "gray" horses gradually turn white over their lifetimes, eventually becoming pure white, in a progressive way.... kinda like that progressive pied thing? Or white-eyes appearing in ever-increasing number as a bird ages? If horses can have a "one way" gene that increases the whitening with each coat shed, why not peas?