Indian peafowl

Name and taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus described the bird in 1758 and gave it the name it still carries. Pavo is the Latin word for a peacock. It reached Latin through Greek and Persian from a Tamil word. The second word, cristatus, means crested. No subspecies are recognised, so the species stands alone.

Geoffrey Chaucer used the English word peacock in the 14th century. Older spellings include pecok, pokok and pocok. In everyday speech people call both sexes a peacock. Writers who need to be exact probably prefer peafowl for the species as a whole.

Evolution and relatives

The Indian peafowl belongs to the pheasant family, Phasianidae. It ranks among the heaviest birds in that family. The green peafowl of southeast Asia shares the genus Pavo. A green peacock crossed with an Indian peahen gives a stable hybrid called a Spalding. The name honours Keith Spalding, a bird fancier from California. Hybrids of unknown parentage do badly when released, as Haldane's rule predicts.

The first whole genome of the species held 15,970 protein-coding sequences. It carries less repetitive DNA than the genome of the chicken. Two population bottlenecks show in that genome. The later one falls about 450,000 years ago, and it cut the breeding population hard. The black-shouldered form was once treated as a separate species. Charles Darwin showed it is a colour variety bred under domestication.

Appearance

The peacock has a metallic blue head and neck. A fan-shaped crest stands on the crown, on bare black shafts tipped with bluish green. Bare white skin makes a stripe above the eye and a crescent below it. The back is scaly bronze-green, and the wings carry chestnut and black. The train grows from the rump rather than the tail, and it is made of upper tail coverts. Each eyespot has a black heart at the centre, a blue ring, a copper rim and bands of green and bronze.

No pigment makes those colours. The fine structure of the feather bends light instead. A peacock grows his train and his leg spur in his second year. The train is not complete until he is four. He moults it each year after the monsoon and regrows it by February or March.

A peahen measures about 97 centimetres and weighs 2.7 to 4.1 kilograms. She has a brown head, a crest tipped with chestnut, and a metallic green lower neck. Her back is brown with pale mottling and her underparts are whitish. Young males look much like the female at first. Both sexes have dark brown eyes, a brown bill and brown legs.

Habitat and range

The peafowl breeds across most of India and Sri Lanka. In India it runs from the Indus valley to Assam, and from the Himalayas to the southern tip. It skips the marshland of the Sundarbans. It climbs to 1,500 metres in the north and to 1,800 metres in the southern hills. In Sri Lanka it holds the drier lowlands.

Open deciduous forest, scrub, small hills and farmland all suit it. Water nearby matters, because the birds drink a great deal. A roost tree, a small territory and enough food are the whole requirement. Many birds live half tame around villages and temples.

People have carried the bird around the world, and feral flocks now live on several continents. It is recorded in 150 countries on GBIF. Alexander the Great is said to have brought it to Europe. Peafowl may have reached Athens earlier than that, by 450 BCE. Captive birds cope with cold, and they winter outdoors in southern Britain under a simple shelter.

Diet and feeding

The peafowl eats both plants and animals. It feeds early in the morning in the open and rests under cover through the heat. Grass, seed, flower buds, fruit, insects and small reptiles all go down. Groups walk in single file to a waterhole to drink. Around villages the birds take scraps from people. Crops in the diet include peanut, tomato, rice, chilli and banana.

The mix changes from place to place. In the Gir forest, Zizyphus berries make up a large share. In the Anaikatty Hills, animal food is under 9 percent of the diet. That animal share is ants, termites, grasshoppers, beetles and earthworms. Peafowl also kill snakes, and they hold down cobra numbers near farms. Two birds were once watched pecking at a cobra without killing it.

Behaviour and social life

Peafowl forage in small groups called musters. A muster often holds one peacock and three to five peahens. After the breeding season the flocks are females and young. The birds stay watchful, and the head turns constantly. They dust-bathe at dusk and never bathe in water, because wet feathers weigh too much.

The peafowl can fly, but it prefers to run into cover. Its colours hide it well, and fifteen birds can vanish into shade in seconds. At dusk it flies up to a roost tree branch by branch, and calls before it settles. A peacock needs to roost at least five metres up, because a tiger can reach three metres. Rocks and rooftops serve as roosts too. A fighting male leaps and strikes downward with the spurs on his legs.

Communication and senses

The usual call is a loud pia-ow, and it comes more often before the monsoon. Peafowl call to mark a predator, and a tiger in the forest sets them off. Other calls include a rapid ka-aan and a low explosive honk. About seven calls and six alarm calls have been described. One bird's alarm passes down a line of neighbours, even at night.

Males add three calls that belong to the breeding season alone. Only a mature male makes those. Calls with more than five notes bring more mating success. The calls may count for more than the train itself. The train makes sound too, because the quills rattle as the bird shakes them. Peafowl read the world through sight, hearing, touch and chemical cues.

Reproduction and life cycle

Breeding follows the arrival of the monsoon. The peacock is polygamous and guards no harem. Related males gather at a lek and hold small territories side by side. Peahens walk in to look, and they are free to leave again. A displaying peacock raises the train into an arched fan and quivers it. He holds the wings half open, then turns to show the fan from behind.

Display sites are open and raised, such as a fallen tree, a boulder or a roof. A peacock will also stand over food and freeze, which invites a peahen closer. Peahens often keep feeding and appear to ignore the whole performance. Males shed the train between late July and late October, depending on the region.

The nest is a shallow scrape in the soil, with a lining of leaves, twigs and litter. A crevice in a building or an abandoned vulture nest will do instead. A peahen lays three to eight eggs. Each egg is 6.2 to 7.6 centimetres long, thick-shelled, and pale white to reddish-brown. She incubates the clutch alone for about 28 to 30 days. The male takes no part in hatching or rearing.

Chicks leave the nest at once and follow their mother. A downy chick may ride on her back, and she can carry it up to a safe branch. The young are independent at seven to ten weeks. Females can breed from one to three years old, and males from two to three.

Predators and threats

Tigers, leopards, dholes, jackals and hyenas ambush adult peafowl. Civets take them as well. A changeable hawk-eagle or a rock eagle-owl takes smaller birds. Chicks die far more often than adults. Near villages, dogs and people kill them.

A predator has to surprise the bird, because a peafowl runs and hides well. The train is a liability, since it blocks the view behind a drinking or displaying male. A big cat can also snatch the train of a male that roosts too low. Spurs give some defence, but they rarely stop a large predator.

Poaching for meat and feathers is a real threat. Birds are also poisoned when they eat seed treated with pesticide. Some are killed for folk remedies. Habitat loss caused by people has done the most damage of all.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the Indian peafowl as Least Concern. A conservative estimate in 2002 put the population above 100,000. Nobody knows the exact figure, and nobody believes the trend is downward. Naturalists have logged 55,862 records on iNaturalist. Law protects the bird in India and in Sri Lanka.

Indian law allows the collection of shed feathers only. Tests can now tell a plucked feather from a moulted one. Several sanctuaries exist for the species, such as Choolannur and Viralimalai. Cities run management programmes that teach people how to limit damage humanely. The bird breeds readily in captivity, and zoos and fanciers keep stock worldwide.

Relationship with humans

The peafowl has lived beside Indian farming for centuries. It spreads seed and eats insects and small rodents in the fields. It also costs the farmer, and it can cut a rice yield by 40 percent. In towns the birds strip garden plants. They attack their own reflections and break glass and mirrors. They perch on cars, scratch the paint and leave droppings.

Feathers are gathered when a male moults, and one bird sheds over a hundred. That collection does the bird no harm. Feathers decorate hats, arrows, cloth and flower arrangements. Indian folk medicine uses a feather extract against viper and cobra bites. The extract is rich in iron and protein and blocks enzymes in the venom. Peafowl eggs are sold where religion does not protect the bird.

In culture and myth

The Indian peafowl is the national bird of India. In Hindu tradition the war god Kartikeya rides a peacock named Paravani. Krishna wears a peacock feather in his crown. The Ramayana says Indra sheltered under a peacock's wing from the demon king Ravana. He then blessed the bird with a thousand eyes and freedom from fear of snakes. In Buddhist thought the peacock stands for wisdom.

In Greek myth, Hera set the giant Argus to guard Io. Argus was covered in eyes and never slept. Hermes killed him, and Hera moved his eyes into the peacock's tail. In Yazidi belief the Peacock Angel, Melek Taus, leads the divine beings and rules the earth. Yazidis may not hunt, eat or curse a peacock. A golden peacock is a symbol of Ashkenazi Jewish culture and appears in Yiddish song.

Medieval European knights swore a vow of the peacock and wore its plumes on their helmets. In the Robin Hood stories the archer fletches his arrows with peacock feathers. Peacock feathers were buried with Viking warriors. In 1526 Cardinal Wolsey called the English judges to decide whether the bird was wild or tame. They ruled it a domestic fowl. In heraldry, a peacock facing the viewer with the tail spread is said to be in his pride.