The Year of the Rooster...or the Coxcomb?

French Black Copper Maran Rooster (sporting a glorious coxcomb), oil on canvas panel, 8" x 8"

A rooster is often characterized by his coxcomb: the fleshy crest found on the heads of many gallinaceous (you know, the order consisting largely of domestic fowl) birds.  A variant meaning of coxcomb especially in Shakespeare and earlier literature is a loud, vain, and self-important man.

My favourite reference has to be from Henry V:

If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating
coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also,
look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating
coxcomb? 

--Captain Fluellen to Gower in Act IV scene I

Silver-laced Wyandotte Rooster, oil on panel, 8" x 8"

So, in the spirit of synecdoche (a pronunciation trap for introvert readers if ever there were), whereby a part stands-in for the whole, I think it might be more apropos to rechristen this the year of the coxcomb.

Apologies to the celebrants of the Lunar New Year and roosters everywhere.