Eye spot feathers

[pittendrigh]

The following streamer has an eye-spot made with an unknown and unidentified feather I found in my boxes. What similar eye-spot feathers are legally available? Jungle cock is available, but prohibitively expensive. What legal feathers have an eye-like spot? Guinea Fowl has too many spots. I'm wondering about single spot feathers......which probably don't exist. I just thought I'd ask. You never know what you don't know, even when you know it.



....that's a Bankrobber, for what it's worth. The weight (solid wire solder) is on the bottom of a curved hopper hook--so the hook
rides up. The front-protruding solder encounters rocks or branches before the fly itself, which causes the hook to tip up as it jumps over the branch, un-snagged. You can cast a Bankrobber right into a log jamb and nearly always get it back again. I developed the Bankrobber when my wife was first learning how to cast. It not only catches fish--it saved my marriage.

[ScottP]

Cool fly; it looks like someone just took a marker and put that spot on a silver pheasant feather.

Regards,
Scott

[DonO1]

Scott, correct. You can see the bleed-out at the top left. Jungle cock is the feather of choice for classic eye spots, but I've seen tiers use different kinds of paint on feathers to make eyes. A lot of paints bleed out the paint base, giving the eye a rough outline, but some paints don't break out like this. I wish I could remember what they were using. Maybe someone else has an answer. The type of feather you paint the eye on also is a factor.

[maodiver]

greenwing teal breast have nice spots...as does the flicker (not that I would ever shoot one of those eaves-holing, wood duck nest stealing, bird feeder bullies!!)

[pittendrigh]

The dot on the fly-photo above is made with a naturally-dotted feather, tied on top of a silver pheasant feather.
(it is not a marker-pen dot....so no, there is no 'bleeding' there).

That dotted feather does look a lot like a flicker feather too.
But that cannot be so, because it isn't legal to possess flicker feathers!

[DonO1]

OK, My bad. I looked close and do see the cover-feather. That must be a flicker synthetic substitute.

[WarrenP]

This probably will not help, but, the first feather with an "eye" dot that came to my mind was a starling skin I have, but, the "eye" dot is a golden color and not black.