Mosaic Pavement with Birds, from Feleet Village Building (Panel B)

This polychrome mosaic floor pavement depicts twelve birds on a plain, white background framed by a decorative, guilloche border in shades of green, yellow, and red. In the center of the panel stands a large bird, probably an eagle that faces forward bearing its breast and spreading its wings. In the lower register of the panel, two peacocks face one another. A peacock tail is preserved in the lower left composed of purple, pink, and green tesserae. The head of a second bird appears in the lower right. The peacock’s tail is rendered as a vertical plane and the feathers are carefully positioned in a repeating, stylized pattern. The remaining nine birds are spread throughout the panel and include such species as a goose, pheasant, and partridge (1). Tesserae in shades of yellow, brown, green, gray and purple create limited modeling the birds' forms. 1. Levi identifies the birds as a heron, duck, partridge, and parrot. For parrots, see House of the Beribboned Parrots; for an eagle in the same pose at Antioch see the House of Dionysus and Ariadne (Levi II, pl. CLXXIX.a)