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Ahhh! I see. Thank you- this was really informative.The breeder may think the terms are synonymous.
Or the breeder may have mixed them together.
Or the breeder may be a bit careless in how they are talking about them. It's easy to do, using a shortened form of a color name. (Common example: people talking about Mille Fleur d'Uccles will often skip the breed name and just call them Mille Fleurs, ignoring the fact that several other breeds also come in Mille Fleur color.)
When I said "solid black," I was talking about the adult color, not the chick color.
Chicks that grow up to be solid black will often hatch with markings like penguins (yellow or white on the belly and some other areas, black on the back.)
The Black Copper pattern should be the same as Birchen pattern (except for having copper rather than silver). Birchen chicks seem more likely to hatch out all black, as compared with chicks that grow up to actually be all black.
Unfortunately, I don't know any way to be sure of telling them apart at hatch. Some Black Copper or Birchen chicks show light markings like black chicks, and some chicks that hatch out all black do grow up to have black feathers all over (Ayam Cemani being the most obvious example of this.)
If someone has been mixing black with black copper, then there could be chicks that have one gene for Birchen and one gene for Extended Black (that's the one expected in chicks that will be black all over). That would confuse things even further.
And just to make things more complicated, it is possible to breed Birchen or Black Copper chickens to have less and less of silver or copper color, and after some years of this they look entirely black. This could have happened in the breeder's flock of Marans, or in other Marans flocks. It would be a good reason for them to think that Blue Copper and Blue are the same thing, if "Blue Copper" actually looks solid blue anyway.
I have been saying "Black" and "Black Copper" and "Birchen" without mentioning blue or splash most of the time. The blue gene changes black into blue or splash, but does not change where the black would be. So I was mostly ignoring it, since I was focusing on where the "black" is on the chicks and adults, not on whether the "black" is actually diluted to blue or splash.
