Doors in Chicago

In the Palmer House Hotel, Chicago - spotted recently by a friend.

Painted peafowl at Burton Agnes Hall

One of Melchior d' Hondecoeter's poultry scenes, with a peahen intruding on the gathering.

On Sunday I visited Burton Agnes Hall in the East Riding of Yorkshire - it's a very lovely late Elizabethan- early Jacobean house with fine architectural features and an amazing art collection ranging from Old Masters to contemporary artists. Among the works were these two paintings that include peafowl. It's always a pleasure to see one of Hondecoeter's poultry groups, and there are two at Burton Agnes, the other consisting of a selection of ducks, geese and a curassow.

Unattributed, but pre-Hondecoeter: a family of peafowl with a very odd-looking turkey, in the Jacobean King's State Bedroom, whose richly-carved panelling can just be seen..

Royal plumes

Pea-egg quiche

I used two eggs. The pea-eggs' mean weight is 99 g - a large hen egg is 63-73 g. 

The pied black-shouldered peahen, being 2 years old, has come into lay, but since she's not been near a male for three weeks I've assumed that the eggs are not fertile and therefore available for culinary purposes. This evening I've made a couple of quiches using these eggs, roughly following Delia Smith's basic quiche recipe, but adding bacon, a small onion (fried) and a courgette chopped into sticks and browned in the pan. I have to say I couldn't make out any particular flavour from the pea-eggs, but it was by far the tastiest quiche I've ever had.

Just out of the oven.

The yolks are not particularly richly coloured, so the filling is quite pale.

Scrambled eggs

Three eggs that will never become peafowl - the unfortunate consequence of poor packaging for the post.

Peafowl at the Yorkshire Arboretum

All five free-ranging peafowl feeding together at the Yorkshire Arboretum this afternoon. The three in the foreground are the Indian blues I raised from eggs last year: the peacocks are brothers, the peahen is unrelated. The two pied peacocks are behind. 

The trio investigating the cafe terrace, after hours, once people and dogs have gone.

One of the Indian blue peacocks. They were hatched in early July 2014.

The 'pied boys'; these came from John Newsholme at Easter. They tend to keep together, a little distance from, but loosely associated with the others. They were both  hatched in 2014.

The pied Indian Blue peacock, showing the classic barred wing feathers.

The pied black-shouldered peacock - a very different plumage. He is 'split to white', i.e. will transmit the gene for all-white birds.

The most recent addition, acquired from John Newsholme last weekend, a pied black-shouldered peahen, in this case split to opal. The genetics of peafowl are remarkably complex! She is a 2013 bird and is currently getting used to her surroundings from within the aviary, but will be released in due course.

Peacock pants

From the Colombian underwear company JOR: the product line is called Pavo Real.