White Eyes

[Garden Peas]

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

But I keep thinking about horses, specifically horses with white on them, because there are very interesting genetics, and a whole lot more time and money has been spent working out the details. There are several different kiinds of "white" horses, and multiple kinds of white splashing or patterning. So for example, some cause the white markings to be big, round patches, and some cause them to be irregular, lacy and in smaller spots. (Sound familiar?) There are actually different white spotting/splashing/marking genes which cause the different shapes and positioning. There are also genes which act as dilution genes, which result in white, but which is not the same genetically as the dominant white... And some of those genes operate differently when they are paired with another dilution gene (kinda like our pied + white combination).

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?

 

[Garden Peas]

I see no white eyes in the photo only pied markings.

@AugeredIn , that was my first reaction also, when I examined @KsKingBee 's photo last evening. But the more I thought about it, the more questions I had about that explanation.

I've already written about the little splashes in the middle of the white eyes... I had heard the same things as Zaz. But the white hurl above the colored eyes really was a stumper, though I looked around in internet la-la land, and found other photos labeled as WE with splashes like that... but no idea of whether the person doing the talking was correct. As we all know, the internet is rife with misinformation

But I was really stumped at the part where he said he didn't see any white on the feathers this year, AND at the part where there were just a few white markings on the bird's feathers last year.

All the pied pix that I can recall offhand seem to have blockier patterns in the white parts of the train, and the entire train feather usually seems to be white, rather than individual feathers splotched with white or half white. Specifically, white crest feathers have matched white spots on the bird's head/neck, as if the white crest feather were growing out of a white spot on the bird.

So the patterning that I have noticed on other pied birds is a different shape and size, and it affects the feathers differently, turning the whole feather white, not just splotching it a little.

And those areas of white stay FIXED for the bird's lifetime, I think... you can see where they are going to be when the bird hatches, if the chick pix are any indication.

But if kkb's bird has white that is just little blotches, and even more important, they MOVE AROUND from year to year, and molt to molt, then that "pied" or white-causing gene is operating very, very differently from the pied gene as I have previously visualized it... the one that causes the chicks to be born with pied patches that are always pied.

My opal silver pied still has spots of color in the very same places that the faint spots were located when he hatched.... those spots have remained stable through his lifetime. I've seen photos of pied chicks with big yellow patches and clear lines of demarcation from IB chick patterning on the chick -- kinda crisp lines between the yellow and the brown stripey chick feathers.

A pied splotch that moves around must be operating at the time of feather formation to somehow impede the deposition of pigment... that must be a different mode of operation from the feathers which are programmed to be solely white for a lifetime in one spot on the skin.

Again, analogizing to horses, some kinds of horse white relate to pigment of the underlying skin, while others have a different skin color underneath. The ones over white skin stay white, the others may act as dilution genes and may change the hair color later... You can see black skin and pink skin in patches on horses, and those stay the same. I'm oversimplifying here. Here's two websites, there are many others:

http://www.mustangs4us.com/Horse Colors/splashed_white.htm

http://www.etalondx.com/#!horse-genes-color/c91c

This is a long way of asking whether this bird of KKB's looks like a "different" version of pied? Maybe some of the reason that we see such variability in pied birds is because there really are more kinds of pied genes than we have identified so far? Lacking a way to distinguish them, we are just lumping them all together? Maybe what kkb has is a spotty kind of pied, instead of a big rounded blotch kind of pied? And maybe that spotty kind of pied changes location from year to year instead of remaining in the same exact spot on the bird forever? At least in the train feathers?

Okay, a really stupid question. I have never (thankfully!) seen a pea's skin with no feathers. Are there any noticeable markings other than the facial markings that we see with, for example, green birds? Does it depend on color of the bird? I told you it was a stupid question

 

[Dany12]

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[zazouse]

Pretty ice flowers but they were upside down

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

Is there any way to tell if the white eyed peacock is split to white also? Sorry if this question is off topic!

 

[Garden Peas]

Is there any way to tell if the white eyed peacock is split to white also? Sorry if this question is off topic!

with his strong pied patterning, I would have assumed he carried one pied gene, one white gene, but I will defer to the experts

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

with his strong pied patterning, I would have assumed he carried one pied gene, one white gene, but I will defer to the experts

Oh sorry didn't mean this bird, i meant in general, this peacock is pied so as you said he should carry both genes, i have white eye peacock and want to know if there is anyway to tell if he split to white also.

 

[DylansMom]

with his strong pied patterning, I would have assumed he carried one pied gene, one white gene, but I will defer to the experts

Is there any way to tell if the white eyed peacock is split to white also? Sorry if this question is off topic!

Okay here's a thought from left field, could he be split to Black Shoulder? I don't have any good pics of a Black shoulder with that first semi-mature train. I do seem to recall some odd whitish-tan markings showing up though. Here is a picture of a yearling black shoulder with the obviously mottled yearling train...... try to picture this as it transitions into the mature train. Could we be seeing a BS influence peeking through like those odd wing feathers on my pied split BS.

 

[Garden Peas]

Breed to a strongly marked pied bird or a white bird, if you get white chicks, he is carrying a white gene ;-)

Visually, you can look for white feathers & throat latch, but I don't think you can tell whether this are from white or pied...Or maybe even from the we?

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

Breed to a strongly marked pied bird or a white bird, if you get white chicks, he is carrying a white gene ;-)

Visually, you can look for white feathers & throat latch, but I don't think you can tell whether this are from white or pied...Or maybe even from the we?

I wanted to know before i breed them this year so i know which hens i should mate him with