Chicken Named Dove

Oil on canvas on panel, 6 x 6 in -- SOLD

This is my new chicken painting. This is a chicken named "Dove" that our friends in Pullman have as a pet. She is a white Ameraucana, so she lays blue-green "Easter eggs." This breed is partly descended from chickens that were in what is now Chile, before the first Spanish conquerors arrived. Humans crossed the Bering Straits land bridge from Asia to the Americas at least 10,000 years ago, but chickens were domesticated in Southeast Asia about 5,000 years ago. After that, chickens were carried throughout the South Pacific by Polynesians in their dugout sailing canoes. So the only way chickens could have made their way to South America before Europeans arrived was by way of... ...Easter Island! (Of course, that's not why we call blue and green eggs Easter eggs.)