Red Buff Spalding FOUNDER FLOCK -digresses into peafowl in general

[deerman]

Spalding are a cross of the india blue and the green peafowl........red buff is a old name for blackshoulder spalding, which what they are call now.

Spalding DON'T breed true either, some will take after the blue other the green.....in the same clutch.

 

[MinxFox]

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Red buff or buff spalding peafowl are pretty much Spalding black shoulders, but the difference between regular India blue black shoulder peafowl and Spalding black shoulders is the Spalding BS peahens are more colored and sometimes look more like a young India blue blackshoulder peacock.

This website explains them a bit more and has pictures:
http://database.amyspeacockparadise.com/redbuffphotos.shtml

Here is a hen:
http://database.amyspeacockparadise.com/spaldingbsfemale.jpg

 

[Resolution]

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I discovered that Red Buff hens have some advantage over other peahens in the survival and successful chick-rearing departments by accident. A friend's ranch in Colorado and another in California as well as Taft Hill and Marlboro College in VT all had sizable flocks of peafowl. They were all descendant of an old friend named Ernie West who I partnered with in 1980's. After he passed away only a few people had places large enough to absorb his collection- spread over four properties. I think we counted 1,600+ birds at the end of it. Anyway, the few dozen birds that arrived at various ranches and farms were mixed groups and there were Red Buff, Buff, Emerald and Common Spaulding + Black Shoulder, and Indian peafowl in these groups. Over the years birds were predated as generally happens and for whatever reason, the Red Buff were the survivors at all four places. Males- that's a different topic. As for female peafowl the most dramatically marked Red Buff hens were the primary founders- the most successful mothers year after year- often the same hen, which may speak to individual advantage as well. I found it odd that Buff Spalding and Black Shoulder hens were the next most successful mothers followed by Emerald Spaulding. The least successful were the pied. Indian peahens did fine at most places and so did Common Spalding but these hens often vanished with their chicks early on -in the first few weeks. This was also true of Black Shouldered and Buff Spalding but the Red Buff were generally more successful with keeping their chicks alive and not getting eaten. Something all these places have in common is the presence of white barked trees and vivid fall foliage. Birches in Vermont and Aspens out west. The deciduous vegetation creates a tapestry across the forest floor. The branches create shadows as do the verdant growth in warm seasons. My friend's Colorado property and my other friend's California property have plenty of red clay or red rock. I think it comes down to the ability of the hen to blend in a mosaic of light, shadow, bark and mineral, sand - the Indian Peahen can conceal herself very well in some places but not so well in others. Perhaps the outline of the Red Buff hens are more difficult to assuage for the fox or the owl. I don't know. When I look around Griffin Hill I see lots of scrub oak and lots of aspen and plenty or bright red rock and mica rich sand- generally pale or pink or dark slate limestone grey. Of course the first generations of peahens are going to reside in the barns with the other critters and we'll have no males for quite some time, not until the female flock is stable completely. Those peahens are going to wander about as a feral flock conditioned to roost at night inside the tall Dutch barn.

 

[Resolution]

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Firstly, a Spaulding is or rather was a hybrid heirloom breed of peafowl named after Mrs. Gladys Spaulding of Sausalito California. She was the wife of celebrated Scots-American yacht builder and violinist Myron Spaulding. Mrs. Spaulding's passion was gardening. The two were frequent visitors of the Isuien Zen Gardens of Nara Japan. Her home has been donated to her township and is renowned for its incredible collection of Japanese maples, peonies, rare bamboos, tree ferns and Asian conifers. Mrs. Spaulding also had a passion for birds, specifically soft-bills. According to the Journal of Avicultural, at one time in the circa ~1950's the Spaulding's estate held one of the largest collections of leaf birds, lorikeets and fruit doves. She was one of the first to have success breeding Nicobar pigeons, which were once very uncommon. The collection was managed by Keith Spaulding, Myron's youngest brother who suffered from Spina bifida. Mrs Spaulding actually named the breed Emerald as this is what Keith called them. She never named them after herself. Delacour wrote about his visits to the Spaulding estate several times in the journal as did many other less-known avicultural authors of the day. Mrs. Spaulding received a pair of Indo-Chinese Green Peafowl from Dr. Dillon S. Ripley. At some point the male wasted away and died. She could not locate another green peafowl as they were exceedingly uncommon in the United States in those days. She paired her hen with a Black-Winged male.

 

[Resolution]

This plate is for rapid identification purposes and represents what one may see in the distance through field glasses.
A slight digression necessary for this topic: All Green Peafowl are not identical. They belong to a superspecies . Different forms of Green Peafowl come from different parts of South East Asia, often populations are many thousands of miles distant from one another.
While they do look rather similar to the uninitiated eye- as there is so much to take in- astonishing birds really- different forms are geographically isolated from one another and have been for tens of thousands and even millions of years depending on which form of Green Peafowl we are discussing.



According to molecular data, the youngest (most recently evolved) form of the Green Peafowl is the Indo-Chinese Peafowl Pavo imperator.


There are several different forms of Green Peafowl that live in Indo-China and they do not all belong to the same subspecies . The Indo-Chinese Green Peafowl which Dr. Ripley gave to Mrs. Spaulding were the Siamese race Pavo imperator siamensis.

This plate is for rapid identification purposes and represents what one may see in the distance through field glasses. This plate is not entirely useful as the wing map has not been completed.

Siamese Green Peafowl are different from other forms of Green Peafowl in that they generally exhibit the darkest facial skin. This is true for both sexes. The malar "war paint" is tangerine orange and the area surrounding the eyes is a dark cerulean blue. The crown feathers (as opposed to the crest) are dark forest green which reflect to turquoise blue. The crest plumes are very tall and form a single turquoise blue lower case L, versus a sharp pointed sheath, shaped like a Christmas tree or heavy ended with spread tips that fall forward as two other forms of green peafowl exhibit. The wings of the male Siamese peafowl are overly dark with a good amount of violet blue evident in the greater secondary coverts and turquoise blue shoulders and lesser coverts. The irides are dark brown. Kicking thorns are present in both sexes and are similar to those of the Indian ( shark toothed) but curve upward. This is dissimilar with what is exhibited in other forms of Green Peafowl. Additionally, the bill of the Siamese is rather short and diminutive when compared with other species of Green Peafowl. The male's iridescent back plate reflects to a dark pine green colour. The tertial plumes ( the shortest wing quills closest to the back) are barred and striated, not entirely dissimilar from that of the Indian Peafowl.

Female Siamese peafowl are overly dark with the upper tail coverts being fairly unmarked though this may not be the case at the outer most portions of the tail. The primary coverts of the female are prominently marked in a tiger stripe pattern. The dark portions of the breast are quite high and the scalation particularly striking in the imperator races as opposed to mosaic of freckling exhibited in females of some other Green Peafowl forms.

In flight, the lesser wing coverts of the male appear much more vivid as they reflect light. The shoulders are particularly brilliant cobalt blue and the larger secondary coverts are vivid violet blue.
Nevertheless, the greater secondary coverts and the secondaries themselves are quite dark with a deep turquoise green sheen.
The female appears darker and the dark primary coverts are visible if you look closely. You may also note that relative lack of markings on the upper tail coverts ( as opposed to the heavy barring exhibited by annamensis and bokorensis .

 

[Resolution]

Mrs. Spaulding crossed a Black Winged Peafowl to a female Indochinese Peafowl. In those days there were Black Winged peafowl versus Black Shoulder. What's the difference? This is largely an issue of genetic purity of lineages. At the middle of the last century, the few people raising exotic birds maintained small, manageable populations. There were no super breeders raising tens of hundreds of birds as there are today. There were also only a very few mutations in existence. There was the White, the Pied and the Black Winged mutations. Black Winged or Jappaned Peafowl were cleaner with real pedigrees in those days as they were still quite rare and valuable in the 1950's and 60's.
A Black-Winged Peacock bred to a female Indochinese Peafowl does not produce the same progeny as a Black-Winged Peacock bred to a female Javanese or Burmese, Cambodian, Yunnan or Malaysian Peafowl.


Each one of these respective Green Peafowl forms has its own unique evolutionary history and they hatch as different looking chicks with unique patterns- only slight variations on a theme, but significant nonetheless. Each Green Peafowl inhabits a specific ecotype- a special habitat - and they are forever locked in an arms race with predators that search for the individual bird that doesn't match the terrain perfectly and/or doesn't behave exactly in the manner that will best preserve its life. These nuances are subtle and mostly lost on those of us that keep the birds in captivity but are made much more obvious in purely wild populations crafted firmly in the scheme of nature's own hand.

One of the most important predators of Peafowl is the Tiger. Did you know there are different subspecies of Tigers? This generation of hobbyist peacock fanciers refer to all crosses between Green and Indian peafowl as "Spalding" in much the same way people refer to ligons and tigons. Of course, in the big cat hybrids there is a rule that at least determines which species was the sire and which was the dam. If the sire of the big hybrid was a Lion the progeny is referred to as a "Ligon". If the sire is a Tiger, the progeny is referred to as a "Tigon". Back in the day, peafowl fanciers were quite a lot more organized and they tended to cooperate as a team not as competitors on a log race.



Mrs. Spaulding created a very specific hybrid and one that certainly did breed true. She bred a black-winged peafowl male with a Siamese Indochinese peafowl female. That was just the f1 and that was not a Spaulding.
The f1 hybrids were then bred together interse- that is brother to sister. As the offspring always takes after the mother in shape and size, the f1 crosses were very like imperator in phenotype and morphology. The f2 were a bit different in colour as it enhanced and produced a glowing emerald phenotype unseen in either parental species. Each successive generation of this very specific recombination increased the glow factor. She produced the cross several times in as many years and produced a few tens of offspring. Delacour was suitably impressed and so he created his own as did many others who learned of the specific manner in which the colourful mutation was produced. There was none of the meanness or secretiveness amongst aviculturists in those days. But an Emerald Spaulding did not exist until she had refined this heirloom strain for many years. Haphazard crosses produce a genetic mixing pot. They don't lead to pedigree.

Breeding a male Indochinese peafowl to a Black-Winged peafowl female is not the same thing as the reciprocal cross. That does not produce an Emerald Spaulding. Breeding an Indian Peafowl versus a Black-Winged Peafowl to any old Green Peafowl does not produce an Emerald either. It's a matter of fact that many of today's breeders consider any hybrid with a high % of Green blood to be an Emerald. That doesn't make it so no matter how many times that's repeated. It's a matter of history and it's not a theory I wrote or dreamed up but rather read it in a series of articles written in Avicultural Magazine from the early to mid 1950's. I also visited the Spaulding estate on a few occasions and learned quite a lot about Mrs. Spaulding's avicultural protocols, especially her nutrition formulas and hand rearing methods first hand. Mrs Spaulding gave two pairs of Emerald Spaulding to Mr. Vernon Denton who in turn sold progeny to Mr. Ernie West, Mr. Albert Hinkle, and Mr. Rudy Heckmen of Temecula ( I'm sure I misspelled Rudy's name- it's been more than twenty years since I last saw him.) This is where the basal group of Emerald Spauldings were founded.

I recall clearly hearing Mr. West complain about the new generation of breeders that were ruining Emeralds by using female Black-Winged and even female Indians with generic Green Peafowl.
Emerald Spauldings ceased to exist as pedigree lineages were polluted with haphazard genetics. The birds ceased to breed true. Thirty + years of selective breeding was destroyed in a matter of just a few years.
The Common Spalding (note spelling change) would come to genetically pollute the heirloom strains maintained for thirty plus years by the old avicultural masters. In my youth I never had an Emerald as they were too expensive, more so than either Black Winged or Indochinese I might add. Back in the early eighties a really good pair of Emeralds might cost you four or five hundred dollars. That's the equivalent of fifteen hundred today. By the time I could afford them, toward the end of Ernie's life, they were less appealing to me as I had begun importing different forms of Green Peafowl directly from Asia. Mr. West and Mr. Hinkle maintained most of this Green Peafowl collection, which brings me to the next topic.



Today's modern aviculturists have written their own book and produced dozens of mutations and colour variations. This reminder of historical record is in no way intended to belittle or marginalize those artificial selection artists but rather to remind all that previous generations spent decades of dedicated energy to this discipline as well and their work is recorded in publications readily retrievable for the intellectually curious. At some point in the mid 1980's there was some sort of get rich quick scheme with peacocks and a new generation of hobbyists emerged- cut from a very different cloth than the old timers. There was never meanness or envy amongst the old masters. They were kind, generous to a fault and loved sharing their experiences with novices. I don't recall ever being given an absolute -there's no such thing as an absolute authority on anything living. Now a days there are people that feel very territorial over strains and colour mutations that they are working hard at. This is reminiscent of the Victorian era flower cultivators- who were incredibly competitive with one another and often uncivil and petty too. But it added to the colour and drama of the flowers. Something good will eventually come of the peacock hobbyist set. I hope it learns something from beta fish and koi selectionists. It requires cooperation over competition. Artificial selection masters respect those that came before them. It's a necessity that they comprehend the precept of stewardship. It's never too soon and never too late to start a selective breeding program that has roots in history and a foundation in aviculture. Building a collection of split to this to split to that and supposedly this and supposedly that -purchased from people who aren't remotely interested in the history of aviculture it's a non-starter. It's problematic to receive this genetic material without molecular data following up each step because there are just so many mistakes that a person can make- especially people rearing hundreds of birds. It takes so many eggs to hatch to produce a single desirable sport. All the cull birds end up in swap meets and auctions. It's just not a great place to start for those of you attempting to reach a specific place with selective breeding. These days it seems as if many people without sufficient experience are the experts and they like to start from scratch regardless of what others that may have experience may share with them. It's part of the process.


recap:

Imperator X Black Shoulder does not an Emerald make.

Black Shoulder X Imperator f1 X f1 X f1 = F2= Emerald Spaulding

Indian X Generic Green = Common Spalding

 

[Resolution]

Conversely, a Red Buff Spaulding is another creature entirely.

Mr. West (against my express instructions) bred a male Jappaned Peafowl with a Burmese Green Peafowl female.

I was furious. The bird he used belonged to him even though I was who imported them.

But before we get to the maternal founder of West's Red Buff we have to deal with the sire.

Now this particular "Jappaned" peacock was itself a hybrid. His name was Shogun and he belonged originally to an antique dealer from northen CA- Merced - can't recall his name-Wilson something like that- but he raised cranes, rheas, seriamas, bustards, stuff like that-elderly. One bird was a White Peacock ( White emerald peacock X White common peahen-) and the female was a Bolaven Peafowl purchased from Mr. Delacour. This is critical. Mr. West kept the pair together for lack of space really and produced Shogun and his sisters.



Another digression: skip if you don't like overwritten missives pitjes.

Just as the Siamese race of the imperator species stands apart, so too does the Bolaven race of the annamensis species. It's a heavy russet gold hued bird truly remarkable- and enormous.. It is one of the high altitude Green Peafowl forms. They have pale hazel irides and a heavy ivory grey bill.

The male's back plate is cerulean blue as is its crown. The crest is a massive affair in the female and it tends to fall forward. The male crest is actually two crests compacted into what appears to be a single crest. The longest plumes of the crest have a different structure than the rest of the crest plumes. They resemble a serpent's tongue or rabbit ears. The male vibrates those crest feathers against the ground during a specific intention display behavior prior to attack. The facial skin is vivid but divergent from that of the Imperator. The Bolaven - one race of the annamensis species, war paint is bright lemon custard yellow with two vivid white rings bordering that warm colour. So in annamensis races, there is a broad white stripe separating the malar war paint the facial skin below the eye. Not incidentally, the under eye are of annamensis is dark grey when the bird is very pleased with itself and surroundings. It's as if the bird has two black eyes. When frightened this dark half circle vanishes and it just has regular blue skin there but this blue is pale sky blue not the dark cobalt blue of the Siamese form.

The white stripe below the blue facial skin only accentuates this half circle and the pale irides. There is another smaller less obvious white or pale stripe separating the yellow-the malar war paint with the surrounding black plumuelles of upper neck between the ear and the throat and between the ear and the occiput (where upper neck meets back of head).

The wings of the male annamensis are much more vivid and light reflecting iridescent than any other form of Green Peafowl. Their shoulders even the larger secondary wing coverts are molten morpho butterfly blue- reminiscent in every respect with that of a monal wing.
Male annamensis tertiary wing coverts are marbled not striated or barred. This marbling is critical in that this codes for a different phenotypic expression in its hybrid progeny than the phenotype of a Green Peafowl with barred tertials. Of course the Indian Peafowl exhibits prominently barred and striated tertials and shoulders. Breeding a Green Peafowl form with barred/striated tertials with an Indian peafowl is going to produce something phenotypically intermediate -and naturally, it will have prominently barred/striated tertials.

The female annamensis exhibit dark russet copper breasts and vivid iridescent moss green, reminiscent of the female Congo Peafowl in many respects. The upper tail coverts and tail are boldly barred and marbled. The wings exhibit similar marbled barring and there is more iridescent violet blue in the female annamensis wing than that of the Siamese form. Both sexes exhibit a violet hued bottle blue gloss over the otherwise very dark black secondary quills. The female exhibits a great deal of tiger striping in her flight quills.

So this Jappaned peacock "Shogun" had a dark blue, scaled neck, a bright white facial skin in the shape of the Green Peafowl. He had a heavy bill, ivory white in colour and every one of his primaries were white as was his throat. He was a beautiful bird and very tame, not aggressive, he'd eat from your fingers. I loved that bird. Huge bird. His father was an ordinary White Peacock with a little green blood from the race tracks and his mother was a Delacour imported Green Peafowl from the Bolaven Plateau. Not incidentally, this race of the green peafowl was imported at the same time as the first Edward's, Bolaven, Beli and Berlioz's Black Silvers and Crested Argus to reach Europe, Japan and the USA. Shogun was an f1 hybrid. The thing I liked most about him was the serpent eyed sickle feathers on either side of his train- the ones that come forward and cover the wing - they were enormous in surface area-the ocelli and so pale was the ochre part they looked nearly white. The pupil portion of the ocelli were similarly oversized and if I recall clearly there was next to no iridescence in the "iris" surrounding that "pupil" of the "eye spot". The ocelli on the rest of the train was incredibly iridescent- just not those few feathers at the outermost portion of the train- it was noticeably different than any peafowl I'd seen until a recent trip to Japan- that's a different topic.
At any rate, the old antique dealer sold Shogun's parents to Ernie and Ernie bred a line of white primary feathered hybrid peafowl with short boxy crests.

Ernie turned around and bred him to the darkest peahen he had. He was trying to breed a black peacock and Shogun was very dark. So, he used a Southern Burmese peahen.

To recap:

Shogun is the original sire of all of Ernie West's Red Buff Spaulding Peafowl. That bird was an f1 hybrid between a White domestic Peafowl male (bred from a white emerald crossed onto a white common) and an Annamensis peafowl female.

The dam of the original Red Buff Spaulding was a Spicifer peafowl female.

 

[Resolution]

So - Shogun was bred to a Burmese Peafowl. The Burmese is a unique species unto itself, Pavo spicifer. There are valleys where it and imperator both frequent though major rivers keep them separated for the most part. The interesting thing is that they don't appear to interbreed and imperator males are notorious for disliking peahens of the wrong colour.


There are three or four races of spicifer .
They differ primarily in the facial colour and the degree of slate in their neck. Males of the southern western race exhibits a gunmetal hued neck and dark facial skin. The southern eastern race exhibits a pale periwinkle green neck and pale facial skin. Both exhibit highly iridescent blue upper necks, crowns and crests- exquisite birds- not at all dull or boring as they've been described in literature.

The nominate spicifer race inhabits the Irrawaddy river valley in northern central Burma



Peafowl from Arakan Mountain Range form their own semi-species Pavo spicifer arakensis

arakensis

The Shan race of spicifer is gun metal hued with a very vivid face. Another seemingly identical form exists on the opposite side of the Irrawaddy. Its range extends from the Shan state to the Arakan foothills.

Birds of the Shan region radiate down and merge into the Tennasirim form of the same race. Tennasirim is southern western most Thailand bordering on Burma to the north and Malaysia to the south.
The Tennasirim Peafowl is a pale faced form.

It should be clear all spicifer races, save for perhaps the Arakan form, are gradations of a theme.
What makes them different from one another is habitat and geographic isolation. As it stands today, habitat destruction is such that none of the stable regional populations will ever have opportunity to exchange genes.

Nonetheless, a Shan population living in the same habitat as the Tennasirim is going to look more like the Tennasirim-and there are intermediate forms between all morphotypical forms.
This is analogous with the situation in Kalij Pheasants.

The females are quite similar but differ for the hue of the face- either mango or custard yellow with grey skin. There is a dark semi cricle of grey under the eye in both sexes.
There is no barring in the tertials. The gloss on the wings of both sexes is bottle blue with a true violet sheen.


In captivity, we have a composite of all the above.
That was a mighty long digression but important to understand the significance of the different geographical forms of the green peafowl, which form a superspecies.
Within that superspecies are good species like imperator, annamensis and spicifer. They are as different from one another as the Siamese Fireback Pheasant is from the Edward's Pheasant is from the Lineated Kalij. Do they look very similar? Yes. Are they similar in behavior and voice? Yes. Can they interbreed and produce fertile offspring? Yes. But are they identical? Far from it. They have different evolutionary histories and inhabit divergent habitats.

Regardless, the composite spicifer peafowl is important as it's a genetic bank. This is why I was furious with Mr. West for hybridizing them with a different species. I would have been equally furious with him crossing the different green peafowl forms. But this was his prerogative.

 

[Resolution]

To wrap things up- back in 1985 Ernie created what he called the Red Buff Spaulding using a very specific cross, not unlike Mrs. Spaulding's effort or the folks that created any number of hybrid mutations of song birds or felines or what have you. I thought they were hideous creatures. I also saw his Buff Spauldings, the cross between Shogun and a Javanese peahen. He never was able to replicate the white primaries on a black-winged bird.In fact, I've looked high and low for a dark navy blue hued bird with clear scaling and a white throat- I've only seen them in Japan.
Getting back to the crux of the issue- my swarm of Red Buff peahens... Though i do not condone hybridizing peafowl- indeed what's gone on with crossing peafowl by tail gate novices is nothing short of tragic. It makes master breeders look like clowns but what are the hobbyists to do when they discover hundreds of carefully crossed culls of unknown genetics for sale at swap meets? No one is there to truly mentor them and the end result is a genetic mud that's hard to fathom. But this is where the domestic guineafowl and domestic turkey breeds got their start- this sort of pandemonium - so it is what it is- not what it aint. People are creating domestic peafowl. It's that simple. As for Red Buff, I am hoping to recover the genetics of that lineage not to breed back to critically endangered captive populations of spicifer naturally, but rather to introduce a new founder flock to a new ranch that I intend to live out my old age on. I'd like to observe natural selection of this founder flock and learn something about founder population theory and behavioral ecology from it. I also want to naturalise a few eared and cheer pheasant about the place and peahens are the best surrogate mothers for this sort of thing. I figure that there has to be some of the original West genetics out there. Red Buff were very popular for a minute. There must be some really dramatically marked aspen bark hued birds out there. So I'm just opening it up to the universe and hoping for the best.

Here are some photos of the seasons in the most dominant ecotype of Griffin Hill adjacent to barns and paddocks. It consists of scrub oak, juniper, grassland with upper desert shrubs and aspen. That ecosystem is within a food zone the peafowl will be comfortable in. The other two food zones, that of the conifer forest and that of the rolling sage brush covered hills are not going to be attractive to peafowl at all and will keep them from wandering far.

I'd like for the birds to be able to conceal themselves in plain sight here standing in this ecotype.

 

[clinton9]

Hi Resolution,
Here's my drawing of heads of green peacocks (all adult males).

Note my writing are names for 4 races of green peacocks.

Clinton.


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