Green Peacock

Pavo muticus

Huzzah! Handsome boy! (side: girl peafowls are called ‘peahens’). He was hanging out at the Miami Zoo, checkin’ us out and shakin’ his tail feathers our way. Sassy.

This dude wasn’t always so handsome. In fact, young peacocks are often hard to distinguish from their less flashy mature female counterparts. Puberty = awesome.

The Peacock Basics

This is a green peacock, different from the Indian blue peacock. Peacocks and their subspecies are largely allopatric but there is some hybridization possible (um, I would like an orange next, kthanks). Peacocks generally live in forests and nest on the ground rather than up in trees or other structures. As far as diet goes – they are indeed omnivorous and munch on all sorts of gross eats from flowers, seeds, arthropods, amphibians, mice and more.

There are only a few healthy feral populations in the US – mostly California but also in Coconut Grove/S. Miami FL. This guy was at the zoo, but we’ve ran into his cousins running amok near Pinecrest in South Miami.

Because they are so lovely people don’t want to think of them as pests, but they can gnarl up your garden pretty good and the male’s crow is more obnoxious powerful than a rooster’s crow! And if you chase ‘em (because hey, catching a peacock does sound a little fun…) beware of their vicious metatarsal spurs (“kicking thorns”). Worse than a kitten’s laser eyes.

That Flashy-Flashy Tail

First of all, let’s get something straight – the “tail” of the peacock really isn’t the tail at all. Wait until he turns around. See that gray and brown less desirable quaff atop his rear? Yeah… that’s the true tail. The flashy “tail” is really upper tail coverts and are covered with “eyes”. But during molting season he’ll drop his shiny accessories and have his dull fluff showing.

Ok – but what makes the tail so brilliant? Optical interference & scattering due to the [nano]structure (fiber/tube like barbules) of the feathers. The scattering and the unique qualities of the feathers make the colors shimmer and change based on light and angles rather than having a flat, opaque color display that is found in chemical pigments. Bragg defraction + crazy crowin’ big fast bird = superb!