OMG, @Kev ! (And anyone else, of course...) Someone from My Pet Chicken just posted some "teenager" pics of the Ameri-flowers - to me, several look like they have lavender - they look like porcelains!
post #7317
- Ant Farm
Are they crosses between Swedish flower hen and amers?
afaik, lavender isn't present in flowers.. blue is though.
One surefire way to tell if a light colored bird is blue or lavender: if there are *any* darker areas or even a single feather that is plainly darker than rest of body it is not lavender. Lavender dilutes everything very evenly- the same color/tone is diluted to exactly the same color elsewhere.
Blue typically has some areas or some feathers that are noticeably darker. A typical example are darker hackles and saddles on a blue rooster. The chicks are showing a darker shade on their heads, that;s an effect of blue. Also one chick has a single darker feather.
Not as obvious, the red/gold areas are not exactly diluted to a pastel color.. they retain a bit of 'hardness' to these areas.
I have a rooster that made me do a double take.. even though I knew lavender was a impossibility in his line... tried several separate times to take pictures of him to best capture his actual colors but the camera phone is apparently very confused about his color and tries to over correct with overexposing or putting a strange effect like a deliberate photoshop effect.. so here's the (ahem)"best" picture of him:
All of the blue parts are a soft light gray color, pretty close to actual lavender color/shade. His upcoming sickles are darker than his old tail feathers, something that can happen with lavender(they can get sun bleached a bit- and he was in a very sunny pen). However the total giveaway are the red streaks on feathers close to his right shoulder. These red feathers aren't softened to a straw/pastel shade at all..
His saddles and cap are way brighter than actual color.. it's regular white with slight pastel gold straw tint on his saddle feathers.
He's "just" a light toned blue silver duckwing... lavender not involved.
I have no idea why blue varies so much, from light"hey is this lavender..?" gray all the way to so dark it looks black, nor why some blues have a dark edging to their feathers or why others lack it
btw for questionable solid blue vs solid lavender birds, there is a way to tell- one or the other has darker quills on the underside of feathers.. I can't remember which one has that or where(could be all feathers, simply easier to see on tail/wing feathers)..
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