[antir-heralds] parrots/popinjays: was "A couple of questions"

[Leslie Schweitzer]

> 
> So you need to show that Europeans could have encountered the sun conure
> in period.  What part of Central America are they from?

True, one should do this. They are apparently (if one can trust wikipedia, which I believe one can in this case) from the "northeastern coastal forests." Western Europeans were there, which should be enough to justify the bird as being known in period - one step from period practice to be sure, but known in period.

The proper coloration of the sun conure is a bit of a caution though. The mature bird is mostly golden-with-red-or-orange-details on its head and body, and has a green tail, and mostly green wings (the 'shoulders' are golden-or-orange, the longer flight feathers are green.) The immature bird has more green on it, but we usually consider mature birds for proper determination. At least the mature birds are pretty consistent in their coloration - little changes as to what exactly is orange or red as opposed to golden, but otherwise, I think, they are consistent.

However, it is not clear that the sun conure is well-known enough to period Europeans to be given this kind of complicated proper coloration. RfS VIII.4.c states "Proper is allowed for natural flora and fauna when there is a widely understood default coloration for the charge so specified. It is not allowed if many people would have to look up the correct coloration, or if the Linnaean genus and species (or some other elaborate description) would be required to get it right. An elephant, a brown bear, or a tree could each be proper; a female American kestrel, a garden rose, or an Arctic fox in winter phase, could not."

I'm guessing that more SCAers know the proper coloration of an arctic fox in winter phase off the top of their head than know the tinctures of a sun conure.

Possibly it might be worth it to your friend to blazon it with a certain degree of oversimplification. It's possible that "a popinjay Or winged and tailed vert" would be registerable. (If it were to be drawn with a bit of red detailing around the in casual use, that'd be O.K. as artistic license.)

Do note that popinjays in period heraldry are almost invariably the Indian Ringneck parakeet - which is actually known by a lot of common names but the species name is psittacula krameri. The bird is as seen here http://home.wanadoo.nl/psittaculaworld/Species/P-krameri.htm
It is a bird which is almost all green, except for a bit of a neck ring and a red beak and flesh-colored feet (which are drawn red in a lot of the heraldry.) I think that De Bara in his heraldic treatise draws his parrot "kinda like a South American Amazon parrot" but other than that, it's this one species.

The good news is that the overall shape of the Indian Ringneck is a lot like the overall shape of the sun conure, so that part won't be "weird." Sure, in period heraldic art, the bird doesn't always look like a parrot except for the "distinctive tinctures" - but sometimes it does. So one wouldn't have a situation where,for example, the long pointed tail is not considered to be appropriate heraldically.

Loyall is correct of course in considering the question of conflict checking vs. a parrot in light of precedent. There is a very useful (fairly) recent precedent in the LoAR of February 2006 that addresses difference with Popinjays, to quote:

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Catherine Townson: This is not a conflict with Brian of Leichester, (Fieldless) A dodo close vert armed Or. There is a CD for the difference between a dodo and a popinjay, and another for fieldlessness.

This is not a conflict with Hrefna in heppna Þorgrímsdóttir, (Fieldless) A raven vert. Both popinjays and ravens are period charges and no evidence has been found that the two were interchangeable in period heraldry. We can, in fact, show that when the two birds were rendered by the same artist, pains were taken to keep them distinct. Typical is the Zurich Roll, which has both popinjays (in the arms of Sanct Johann, d'argent au perroquet de sinople acc. de deux etoiles de sable rengees en barre) and crows (in the arms of Schifer, de gueules au chef d'argent charge d'un corbeau de sable). The popinjay's beak is the typical hooked form we associate with parrots, macaws, budgies, etc, while the crow's beak is long and pointy. The popinjay also has a long, pointed tail. The raven has a long but raggedly square tail and a shorter neck than the popinjay. Other examples include the Armorial Bellenville, the Grand Equestrian Armorial, de Bara's Blason des Armoiries, and Siebmacher (!
 von Rabenstein, plate 105, and von Puchenaw, plate 141). While the differences vary from artist to artist, in each case ravens and drawn distinctly different from popinjays.

Both Hrenfa's and Catherine's birds are in their standard period posture (close), are drawn correctly, and there is a visual difference. Thus the criteria laid out by Laurel in the January 2002 Cover Letter are met; we will therefore grant a CD between a raven and a popinjay.

There is still no difference granted between a falcon and raven, nor between a falcon and a popinjay; however, conflict is not transitive and -- until it is shown that popinjays and ravens were interchangeable in period -- we will grant a CD between properly drawn ravens and popinjays.

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Hope this helps!

Zenobia Wreath, who has a Patagonian Conure at home - which bird cannot blazon, but was originally taught to meow like a cat by heralds. (She now meows like heralds sounding like cats, as well as a couple distinctive versions of cats-sounding-like-cats. Something about cats meowing and getting my attention. She's not dumb.)