Hi,
At the end of Eric’s recent article on old flies (I’m really enjoying these Eric! Thanks for starting them up again) he mentions that in one version of the dressing for the Cassin it indicates a the wing was a black feather white tip dyed yellow, and Eric muses on the possibility this white tipped black feather might have come from a Cassin finch. He rejects that idea in the end (apparently Cassin finch do not have black feathers with white tips that coudl be dyed yellow).
It did make me think of a Heckem Peckem though, which uses mallard wing slips cut from the section that leaves the tips white and the rest of the wing is from the blue section (on some feathers, the blue isn’t very blue and in general just looks black). Anyway, one could easily dye those tips yellow, which makes me wonder if these might be the source of the said wing? (especially since they were already used in a popular series of patterns: apparently there were more peckems then just the heckem peckem).
- Jeff
