So I’m watching a Sir David Attenborough (Natural Curiousities on Netflix), to cope withe the crushing lonliness of solo housesitting, and he’s on about Really Weird animals and talks about the origins of the pheonix- a bird that people travelling though Africa only rarely saw shrouded in the streamy mists of volcanic soda lakes (which are literally boiling hot and also extremely caustic).
And all they’d see is the occasional bit of bright red plumage and see these things bobbing in and out of the horrible death clouds coming off the lake, and naturally came up with the myth of a firebird what the fuck ELSE would be living IN A GODDAMN VOLCANO??
The Central Africans told this to the Egyptians who told the Greeks* about this mysterious animal, and they ran hog-wild with it to create the now-famous Pheonix, but-
The bird they were seeing in those volcanic lakes?
*There is significant academic debate about who told who what when (esp as the firebird myth has cropped up multiple times and been culturally exchanged many, MANY times) but the Flamingo>Egyptian Bennu>Greek Pheonix>European Pheonix chain is fairly well agreed upon.
It’s not uncommon for chickens, especially roosters, to have iridescent green* feathers of varying intensity and hue, but those feathers are typically located on the body or tail, and are really more like black feathers with a green sheen. Some ckickens will have these feathers up in the head/neck area like
A) This Nice Australorp Rooster
B) This Buckwild Mutuant, which looks an awful lot like some of the feral chickens I saw roaming Hawai’i, though the photographer does not say where this specimen was found. His green feathers go right up to his throat! I’ve seen specimens there with some outright teal necks and heads, though they didn’t seem to be as popular with the ladies as thier more fair-headed cousins.
*Fun fact: almost no birds have green-pigmented feathers. The green color comes from light reflected from microscopic structures on the bird’s feathers. the only bird with Actual Green Pigment is the Turaco, which has Turacoverdin! This is probably only a fun fact if you are a biology nerd, but it’s one of the EXTREMELY FEW green pigments that occurs in vertebrete animals and comes from the Tucraco’s copper-rich diet, which is another Fun Fact only if you are major NERD. here’s a picture of one becuase they’re cute, and becuase it’s a really strange green for a bird to have:
So while Turacos come in the nice limey green color like in my Icon, Chickens Do not.
design/concept drawings for a bunch of my thajir characters. the thajir is a species of birb-y people that me and my gf @erokubi created for one of our RP universes; they’re shapeshifters but this is their “default” humanoid form.
More of the baby Green Heron. He’s losing a lot of the fuzz from his head now. The first time I saw him he wasn’t catching much, but I’ve seen him catch a couple dragon flies and a few tiny fish since then so his hunting skills are improving.
The little guy is not very ‘street smart’ yet which is why I’ve managed to get quite a few shots of him. I’ll share a few of the adult Heron too – looks the same but no fuzz and less striping on the chest.
This is a Blog 2.0 