Study of Eyes

[george simon]

Originally Posted by Fbirdie82

I never really paid much attention to eye color.

Sure, I knew that Frillies have orange eyes and Capuchines have pearl eyes... but other than that, I never really looked close. Lately I have found myself looking more at my bird's eyes. And today I noticed that two nestmates have very different eye colors.

I decided to take a few pictures, and compare them to my other birds. This is when I discovered that I have two very distinct eye colors in my black Frillbacks. My "foundation cock" has dark orange eyes, while his mate has brilliant pumpkin orange eyes. Their offspring are almost 50/50 dark and bright eyes! It just occurred to me that I should have noted which birds are cocks, and which are hens, to see if there is some sort of correlation? When I get back from work I will do that...

Has anyone else documented or studied something like this?

Hi FIREBIRDIE 82, Good question and I will try to answer it but first I would point out that WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT EYESIGN which is nothing more then a theory and is not a genetic study. I will be quoting from Joe W.Quinn's book "An Introduction to PIGEON SCIENCE"on page 86-88. The first thing we should deal with is the eye color in squabs.In general,squabs are dark-eyed at birth, with eye pigmentation of the adult gradually being acquired within 2-3 months.
The major exceptions are brown and almond squabs In these exceptions the eyes tend to be pink as the true pigmentation is delayed weeks longer................The wild type of coloration is orange-red which is dominant to pearl. therefor the mating of a orange-red to pearl will usually be orange-red. I say usually because where birds with white around the head tend to produce bull eyes. The squabs will carry the gene for pearl,and will produce some pearl eyes. Becky was correct when she said in an eariler post that she thought that orange-red was dominent over pearl. GEORGE

[hasseian_313]

well as a iraqi breeder we dis like yellow or red eyes no offence to any birds with yellow or red eyes it just how were tought
we perfer pure whites to have black eyes or what we call glass eyes it with no red like pearl eyes just blue or white
in other collors all forms of pearl eyes or green eyes and blue eyes are rare but ive seen em