to think that asking if a peacock is male is a really stupid question?

[Vagabond]

I was sitting outside my local pub the other day admiring the local peacock (who was all a-preening). The ladies at the next table to were also admiring said peacock. When the waiter came over, they asked him if the peacock was male or female! I almost fell of my chair?

AIBU?

Oh and if you referred to the Irish language as Gaelic in front of my mother she would spontaneously combust.

Thing is, I'd never heard the word Gaelic until I met DH. Weird. In fact, I thought it was something to do with France

Back to birds. Do we all know what colour head black-headed gulls have?

And why moorhens (regardless of gender) are so called when you won't find them up on't moor?

I suspect a trick question with the black-headed gull thingy

I am always bemused by how many people think you have to have a cockerel to get hens to lay eggs. I have also been asked if cockerels lay eggs. I did do a face at that.

Gallic is to do with France, I think.

Yes, Trillian. I was not a very worldy 16 year old

Welsh for Wales is Cymru. Welsh for Welsh is Cynraeg.

One of my relatives had recently had a baby and brought her to my mum's house to visit. My mum noticed some cradle cap on the baby's head (a big patch of it) and scraped it a little with her finger to remove it from the baby's hair. She suggested some kind of home remedy to help get rid of it.

My relative looked at her in horror. "OH NO, you can't do that, can you?!"

My mum: "What do you mean? It doesn't hurt her."

Relative: "But they need that to breathe, don't they?!"

It soon emerged that she believed that the soft spot on the baby's head was required to breathe and removing the cradle cap would damage it in some way.

freerange

typo on Cymraeg in my post, the word has an M not an N.

If you have a cockerel and a hen who are chickens then if you have a peacock and a peahen are the birds called 'peas'?

I've got one.... A Koala is NOT a bear. It's a marsupial. It should not be called a 'Koala bear', just 'Koala' is more than adequate.

regardless of the name of the poor bird in question, I am a bit that they had to ask because the male and female are so different! Only the males are the brilliant blue/green - the females are very drab in comparison.

Blatherskite - yes, but you'd be surprised to know that even some Australians refer to it as a "koala bear" (take my DH, for e.g.).

"Only the males are the brilliant blue/green - the females are very drab in comparison."

Yes, but presumably at some point you didn't know that. Until you either asked, were told or read it somewhere. I certainly remember a point at which I discovered that peacocks were all male.

I'm trying to think how many animals you routinely refer to in a gender specific way. Cow/Bull is pretty much all I can think of right now. Dog covers both even though technically it describes the male. Um... Maybe chickens, although chicken is the breed it seems to mean the female with the male referred to as a cockerel.

I didn't teach my daughter the difference and she was at nursery at the time so I don't know if they taught her. She just seems to pick things up. She worked out that ducks are the same (male being colourful) all on her own. I pointed at them and asked which were boys and which were girls, she thought about it and explained it to me that the colourful ones were boys like peacocks.

Only read the OP.

And I'm not really sure why, but it made me laugh till I cried.

Both the title and the OP are fucking hysterical.

Also, I once saw a peacock fly.

Okay, carry on.

A bit off topic (sorry) but we were adopted by a peahen when I was a kid. It lived in the apple tree and used to come down the garden path at dawn and yell until we fed it.

My mum wanted to name it after some Indian goddess, but Dad named it Biriyani. Guess which name stuck.