My Cameos, Sandy & Dusty
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Located in Pen #2, right between magnificent 'ole Pete and Polly and the rather scrawny whites Zephyrus and Arabella reside Sandy and Dusty, my two year old cameo breeding pair, along with the silly purple peahen Skye. They were named with the help of Ann in my "Name My Peacocks Contest." I found the names very fitting, since Dusty has a dark brown "dusty" appearance, while Sandy is a much lighter, creamier brown and appears as if she was sprinkled with sand.
I got Sandy and Dusty in October 2000, as a birthday present, along with a pair of silver pieds from Dennis Erdman. Even when placed in the large juvenile pen with my other pairs, Dusty always stood out as a very friendly and sociably bird, taking bread out of my hand when all the others were too afraid.
Dusty was the first of my juvenile males that I saw spread out his feathers. He looked (and still looks) quite silly at the time, with scraggly uneven feathers with only a few scattered eyespots. Before the breeding pairs were split up, he was at the top of the pecking order.
Now that the birds are seperated the cameos' personality has really emerged. They are the friendliest pair I own, and were the first (beside Spaz) to come up and take clover and dandelion leaves out of my hands. However, Dusty seems to lack a little something in the brains department. When the birds were moved to the new aviary, most of them would not walk on the wire, but either stayed inside or walked along the wooden frame boards. A few weeks later most of them have gotten over that, but not Dusty. He still only walks on the boards, and jumps from frame to frame to avoid the wire.
Since the move, I have gotten a few eggs out of the pen, however I cannot be sure whether it was Skye or Sandy laying them. However, the birds being none too bright, I lost an egg just recently because they insist on laying the eggs on the wire and it cracked it, even though they have a closed off corner filled with straw to lay in. I'm still hoping to have some cameo chicks this year. Since cameo is a sex linked mutation (so is purple, but that's rather a moot point since I don't have a purple male) any female chicks that hatch out, whether they were layed by the purple or cameo hen will be cameo, while the males laid by Sandy will be cameo, and the males from Skye's eggs will be India Blue split to both cameo and purple. However, only time will tell if any of the eggs are actually fertile and hatch sucessfully.
