So sad, Lost one of my new peacocks today!

[thndrdancr]

I am so sad tonite.

I lost my new peacock I bought at auction three weeks ago. I really wasnt in the market for another male, but he was 2 to 2 1/2 years old and SO pretty and NO one was bidding on him.

So I bid and got him for $20. I didnt even take pics, I been meaning to, but now I lost him and dont even have a picture of how pretty he was.

He was so spastic, I had to be oh so careful when I went into the pen to feed and water. I have two more bs ones in there that are younguns that I bought and one peahen that got away and is running around the place. I wished now I had let him out too. I think the stress and being penned, etc was too overwhelming for him. I sat out there and made sure the younguns were eating, but didnt make sure the GROWNUP was eating, figured he would know. Now I could beat myself.

He was fine this weekend, but yesterday I went in the pen and he was laying down. I was thinking, oh wow, he is getting more used to me and not so spazzy. Great!

And this morning he was laying down but in a different place. So I approached him and he didnt even bat an eye. I brought him in the house and eye droppered some water in him along with the baby bird handfeeding formula. Had to leave for about 4 hours and when I got home, he was gone. He was soo so pretty, I feel like such a horrible peacock mom.

I should have approached and checked on him yesterday, then it might have been early enuff to save him, but it was so cold and windy I just fed everyone and scurried back inside.

 

[SilverPhoenix]

I'm so sorry for your loss. Sometimes these types of things just happen, sadly--who knows what it was that killed him.

That stress definitely made him more vulnerable, although I'm sure you did what you could to make him comfortable. It was good you tried to save him by giving him some water and baby bird formula! Unfortunately, a lot of times by the time a bird shows illness or weakness, it's too late, so it's possible even if you tried the day before he still may not have pulled through.

Try not to blame yourself, and know that you at least gave him a good home while he lasted.

It's sure disappointing and sad losing a bird...

 

[chickenzoo]

So sorry, when you are not familiar with the bird it is very hard to read them, even then it is hard.... we've all been there.

 

[Resolution]

Two and one half years is the age when most folks lose their first male peafowl. The next age will be anytime during a heavy moult.
Here are a few reasons why this can occur.
1. People tend to feed their peafowl like domestic turkeys, or worse yet, chickens.
Peafowl are obligatory predators of invertebrates and small animals. When the peafowl is growing in its first train, it needs optimal nutrition.
They do not digest vegetable protein adequately and pellets and mashes that use steamed soybean meal as one of their primary sources of protein tend to make birds live very short, unproductive lives.

2. Sanitation. When we feed these 'inexpensive' pellets and crumbles to our highly omnivorous bird species, they produce copious amounts of very rancid smelling manure.
It is next to difficult to keep their enclosures spotless but this is something we simply must do. Perches must be washed down at least once every other week with pinesol to help control mites and feather lice and remove fecal material tracked onto the perches from the ground. Why is this important? Because the birds rest their breasts on their feet when they sleep and then they preen their feathers, thereby ingesting fecal material. Sand is a good substrate for peafowl find some and don't put their feed anywhere near the ground. Find a table. Put a tough vinyl tablecloth on it and place their feed in no tip dispensers on these tables. Always make certain that the water dishes are as clean as humanly possible. The mantra I never live up to but will probably die fruitlessly trying is " Would you eat/drink out of that thing?" " Really" " I mean Really Really?" " Ok do it then if it's so clean ."

 

[evonne]

Quote:
hhmmm i'm glad i stopped in and read this.... my peas were adults when i moved into their house, and now in my new house i have 3 of their eggs in the incubator... i will have to remember to watch the feed carefully.. do i need to be more careful the whole first 2.5 yrs, or just as they are growing their first train??

sorry bout the loss of your boy... could be he was sick before you even got him.... bird auctions can be scary places.. a friend across the country goes to them and tells me horror stories.... seems there's no regulations and all those birds from all those different environments in one place... *shivers*

 

[deerman]

Quote:
hhmmm i'm glad i stopped in and read this.... my peas were adults when i moved into their house, and now in my new house i have 3 of their eggs in the incubator... i will have to remember to watch the feed carefully.. do i need to be more careful the whole first 2.5 yrs, or just as they are growing their first train??

sorry bout the loss of your boy... could be he was sick before you even got him.... bird auctions can be scary places.. a friend across the country goes to them and tells me horror stories.... seems there's no regulations and all those birds from all those different environments in one place... *shivers*

Don't believe everything you read.....Most peacocks are lost before they are 3 months old. Best to start them on a medicated starter feed(turkey or gamebird 24%) Lot of long time breeders on here even, check with any of these people for true facts.

Rare to lose peacocks at 2 1/2 ,yes it happen.

Reason nobody was bidding ,maybe because he was sickly...Sorry you lost him, hope he didn't have something to sprend to your other birds.

 

[Resolution]

i will have to remember to watch the feed carefully.. do i need to be more careful the whole first 2.5 yrs, or just as they are growing their first train??

--*shivers*

The short answer is yes. yes and yes. Peafowl are unique in all the animal world. No other creature quite fills their niche. What we take for granted are the similarities between Peafowl and other terrestrial fowl. The differences become more obvious only after they are pointed out and discussed. The nutrition of peafowl is a subject that comes up with such frequency; it seems obvious that people who keep peafowl want to do right by them. Poking about in literature and online can be frustrating as the same old moldy information keeps being perpetuated as bottom line fact. In my estimation these gross generalizations without any real foresight, do more harm than good. Most of the information ‘out there’ does very little to help Pfans make more educated decisions with regards to the special needs and requirements of this important group of birds.

The management of peafowl requires a different mindset than that for typical poultry, mostly because the peafowl exhibits such markedly delayed maturity.
What works for typical poultry and gamebirds can and does work with peafowl. Does it leave to long healthy lives for the birds? Is it ethical? These are questions for the pfaviculturist to decide. Judging from the number of birds being pawned off at tailgate auctions and the number of threads dedicated to fowl hobbyists with sick birds- sick peafowl- I think that perhaps status quo has already failed the peafowl and quite some time ago.

But I'm not here to figure out what's wrong about stuff. It's more productive to find out what's right. If ever there is a question about the nature of something.
Well, ask nature (!)


In order to gain a better comprehension of the life cycles of the Indian Peafowl, as it relates to varying nutritional/environmental requirements, of each growth phase- it is necessary to put the species back into the context of its natural environment.

There are a few prerequisites to get out of the way first.

1. The Indian Peafowl inhabits open deciduous forest habitat. What does that mean exactly? Well it means that it lives in an environment that is both grassland and wooded, not unlike the African Savannah, but substantially more forested. There are two seasons in the Indian Subcontinent and they are the dry season and the wet season. During the dry season, the majority of the taller trees and many of shrubs lose their leaves. Instead of frost and snow falling as we have in some Palearctic countries, scorching heat falls instead. Six to eight months may pass without a single drop of rain. The forest seems barren given the heat and desiccation of the dry season. The desert-like landscape vanishes quite quite suddenly once the rains have come. Verdant growth springs to life and the deciduous open forest is transformed almost overnight. The preferred ecoystem affords the peafowl certain benefits, while presenting many large challenges as well. The habitat is lush and verdant after the rains have replenished the earth. Its dry and scorched after that rain has evaporated.


Each phase in its plumage development/age stage is in step with certain environmental parameters that determine success or failure within their potentially long life span and mark another milestone in the life history of the species.
In short, its not just a moult it’s the beginning of new growth phase and that growth phase can be distressful if the pfaviculturist isn’t paying attention to details and is disoriented as to where they are in the life cycle of their birds. It’s not just breeding season and non-breeding season. Just because the bird may not be strutting about with its train extended doesn’t mean that it’s on some sort of hiatus from living.

2. The Indian Peafowl is gregarious and non-migratory and yet presents a bit of a dichotomy. It flies to nocturnal perches that may or may not be within the food zone where it actually forages. A bird’s home territory may encompass an area only a half a square mile in diameter. This can grow or expand depending on the time of the year naturally. Regardless, it follows a certain daily routine that is not likely to be interrupted or changed for weeks or months at a time. When other animals migrate away for greener pastures, the peafowl sticks put unless an unusually long dry season forces them to seek sustenance elsewhere. It means that the peafowl memorizes every bump and groove of its habitat during the long hot dry season and there is probably no warier or more watchful a species in all the forest as this bird. Nothing seems to escape its notice. In other words, it decides where to nest before the rains come and transform the landscape. It treads the same narrow worn paths that it frequented during the dry season, as it will during the greener months. Despite Charles Darwin’s many assessments to the contrary, the Indian Peafowl is quite a lot more than a curious ornament in its natural habitat. It is a part of that environment. It is not made more vulnerable by its existence (!). It flourishes in it.

3. The birds perch as all peafowl do, on emergent trees that stand quite apart from other forest trees or quite far out in a grassland far removed from other trees. This is thought to afford them protection from nocturnal predators like the civet cats. The birds are thus obliged to make their way to and from this perch, often hundreds of feet tall, no matter what the temperature or weather. The birds are very dependent upon permanent source of water and so the daily morning ritual of flying from the nocturnal roost to water may take the birds further and further afield.
What does this mean to our conversation? Young peafowl eventually have to make that flight up to the roosting tree where their parents have rested every night for three or four years. When you look at a young peafowl try and study the marvelous structures that are its wings. Few other gallinaceous birds have such markedly developed wing feathers and muscles at hatching as the peafowl. Growing whole new sets of wing and tail feathers of the size and density required to sustain such a large bird in the air is an expenditure in energy. Consequently, the first developmental phase after the chick phase and before the true juvenile phase is a period of time when the chicks are only ~ a quarter the size of their mothers. They are difficult to sex in the field but exhibit long legs and big feet for their size. Their wings seem enormous in direct proportion to their weight and body surface area. The tail is long and broad, darker than one might expect from the species. At this point in their development they probably most resemble the proto-peafowl that gave rise to the modern forms. They are perfectly designed for both prolonged and vertical flight and can still shape-shift enough to avoid being harassed by some smaller birds of prey and other opportunistic hunters of peafowl. Its obligatory predators are still waiting in droves but it is no longer on the smorgasbord roster of the non-obligatory hunters. It’s too large to easily capture and can fly as fast and as far as an adult but being so light it can actually sustain itself further and take evasive action on the wing.
This is also an age stage where the birds need to consume the some of the highest quality nutrition. They’ve moved from invertebrates to frogs and lizards, which they will increasingly capture on their own.

In summary, the peafowl is an ecological specialist during the long and arduous dry season because sustenance can be difficult to attain. This is made all the more substantial by the presence of its natural predators. The peafowl must eke out enough food to survive that will also enable it to perpetuate more of it s kind all the while avoiding its predators. It does this by requiring very little from its environment and being an adept hunter of small animals and invertebrates that provide it with optimal nutrition that enable it to regenerate and grow in step with its environment. The developmental stages of a peafowl are enormous in direct comparison with other birds of similar size. Few galliform birds display such markedly delayed maturity, or require so much of their parents for so many years.​

 

[Resolution]

The Indian Peafowl and its domestic descendants pass through three major growth phases before they are completely mature adults.
Male Indian peafowl continue this growth cycle until the 8th or 9th year, adding additional rows of upper tail coverts with each successive moult. Each of these growth phases take roughly a year to complete, which is further delineated into 8 specific moults of specific remiges and rows of contour plumes. These moults are gradual and you will find one bird or another in a developmental phase that is intermediate to the next.
It is counter-productive to view earlier age and developmental growth phases as greater or lesser to the full train of the adult male. Each growth phase and developmental stage within that phase is perfect unto itself. Each stage marks a period of survival from the last. It may be helpful to conceptualize each new developmental plumage phase the bird successfully passes through as the gaining of a new merit badges or metals, new epaulets and so on that signify successful acquisition of armour and skills necessary for the survival of the bird itself and of its species.

Growth Phases of the Indian Peafowl
Naturally, the peafowls predators keep a close watch over every moment in the life cycle of these birds.
For every single species of predator that occurs in in ourtemperate climate forests there are upwards of four or five predatory species in the subtropics. For every five species prey species in these temperate climates there are upwards of twenty prey species in the subtropics. This is because there is more biodiversity in the subtropics. Consequently, animals from subtropical environments tend to have more complex behavioral repertoires, vocalizations and social behaviors.
It’s important to make more than just a passing mention of the three different guilds of natural predators that prey on peafowl so that we can better appreciate just how well adapted for life in its natural environment the Peafowl is. Gaining a comprehension of the biology of these different guilds of predators can help us gain a better perspective on the form and function of each developmental phase in the birds' lives as it relates to the behavioral ecology of the species as a whole.

Year One
monitor lizards and http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a83/PiAmoun/Maahesian/treesnake.jpg[/IMG]and any number of snake species would be principle amongst these.


Because the young peachicks stay close under their mother's long broad tail, it is difficult for many opportunistic predators to make a meal of them. The peahen is a fearless defender of her chicks and few smaller predators are willing to risk injury fighting with her.


Nevertheless, a fox sized monitor lizards is a formidable foe, one that is not easy to dissuade. This is where the territorial defense of the adult, train-bearing males comes into play, more on that later, but to be certain, the peahen is more than capable of defending her self. There are accounts of fearless peahens chasing down mongooses and monkeys that have snatched her babies.

In the event that she finds herself outflanked and without a guardian, she will stage an escape and because the chicks are such adept fliers, even just a few days old, she will often out-wit those predators that she cannot drive back. Smaller forest hawks are always on the lookout for lost peachicks and every time a family unit is forced into the air, it is a given that some of the chicks will become disoriented and make themselves vulnerable crying plaintively from the crown of tree for their parents. This is probably how forest hawks end up taking peafowl.
The worst enemies of the peahen and her chicks while in the nesting habitat are opportunistic predators, for example, adjutant storks, herons, crows and mongooses, those species that take whatever prey comes their way.

After a few weeks in the relative safety of the the tall grass habitat in the peafowls' nesting territory, the birds are obliged to move into the open savannah and scrubland of the adult foraging range.

Here is where they will find most of the invertebrates the young birds will need to develop into their next developmental stage.

This is also the period in time when those most dangerous obligatory mammalian and [URL='http://globalraptors.org/grin/SpeciesResults.asp?specID=8339']large avian predators first come into focus.

The birds grow quite rapidly at this stage in their development but being almost entirely dependent upon invertebrates and small animals at this stage, animals that need to be chased down, captured and eaten in other words, the young peafowl attract many predators. Small to medium-sized mammalian predators in the civet and cat families, jackals and large birds of prey are probably the worst threats to peafowl at this stage. These predators are also capable of taking the adult female.

Interestingly, the civets are primarily nocturnal and peafowl perch very high out of harms reach. The only peafowl that are vulnerable to civets will be those that are not yet strong enough to reach the adult roosting tree and naturally, the peahen brooding on her nest.

Civets are also known to hunt during rainstorms and waterlogged peafowl of any age must be very vulnerable to civets.

Small to medium sized cats are always on the lookout for a big meal. Fishing cats and junglecats are particularly fond of peafowl of all ages, though field biologists report that peahens and males younger than two years old are more frequently documented as kills for these species than sub-adult or adult males, which is interesting as well. It suggests that the sentinel behaviors of the subadult males and adult males renders them less likely of becoming prey to these medium-sized felines. It also suggests that females and juveniles are somewhat dependent upon the older males for defense and protection.

Hawk-Eagles hunt in groups and are particularly adept at hunting not just juvenile peafowl, but also subadults, especially unpaired peahens.

1-8 Growth Phases
Year Two

Now that the juvenile peafowl have survived their first full year, they are more or less independent. They still maintain a close relationship with their parents and remain within their parents’ guild. Nevertheless, their adult size and strength obliges them to forage slightly further afield at times to avoid competing with their younger siblings and other social guild mates of the year. This puts them under the constant threat of a new guild of predator, large cats and canids and large birds of prey.

9-18 Growth Phases

Leopards, Dhole Bush Dogs and Hawk-Eagles are probably the most important predators of peafowl at this stage.

Year Three

19-28 Growth Phases

One of the reasons that relatively few adult peafowl males are discovered amongst the kills of predators is that they have, by their third or fourth year of life, learned a great deal about their habitats and local environs. Their social guild with all its complexities of rules and impassioned customs serves to help keep the peafowl alive.

Adult peafowl are one of the preferred foods of big cats, especially tigers and leopards.

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[Resolution]

This capacity to reach and stand on top of the tallest trees in the landscape affords “Mayura”, meaning literally “ Snake Killer” in the Hindi language, an advantage he can ill afford to live without. For as you can clearly see the peacock is, compared with most other creatures in the forest, one that enjoys a relatively long lifespan. Though we are dazzled and dismayed with his ravishing beauties, he is quite distracted with the health and well being of his family and the social unit or guild in which his flock remains year after year and decade after decade.


Behavioral Ecology/Nutritional Requirements

All year round, the adult peacock stands on some emergent tree towering over the forest. Blazing sun, torrential downpours and roaring winds can little dissuade the peacock from watching out over its territory, for his enemies are so numerous and so deadly, he must take care to watch over his microcosm of the world. Every intruder is spied upon and announced. Every blast of wind and hopeful rain cloud heralded out as if emotion is formed from some electric charge in the air...
Where many ground birds have much to fear of aerial predators, they live their lives just a mad dash from the sanctity of forest cover, of vegetative shelter, not so the peacock. His greatly elongated train of upper tail coverts enable him to shape shift in half of a moments notice. Hundreds of flat, shiny, silken remiges, made to spark in sunlight almost to the point of invisibility, fan out horizontally in just such a manner that the train of coverts appear to be not so much an elongation of the tail, but the gossamer cape of a supernatural bird hero, the indefatigable foil of every super villain prowling about on the forest floor far below. ..And in the sky...

As the tiniest speck in the heavens descends, lazily circling as only vultures and eagles are known to, the peacock extends his long neck, erecting every shaggy neck feather to its greatest length. He emits a guttural coo and click that can be heard a surprising distance away as he flattens out his train and spreads it laterally, forming a great reflective surface from which he signals his unwillingness to take flight -to be made to quarry.
Flashing his burnished mirror, as if sending morse code, our beloved peacock asserts that he is far too large and dangerous to be made easy prey.

The soaring raptor or vulture wheels on the wind in just such a way that it signals no harmful intention. The peacock stands straight up again, pumping his head and neck as he sounds out his latest greatest feat. As the great bird of prey drifts by again, lazily, with no little indifference, the peacock announces his brave deed, embellishing its relevance no doubt- the base propriety of which a neighboring peacock will take aim at, volubly challenging his rival's version of events. It's a never-ending volley of biases and opinions. From the sound of things it as if there's some brash accusation slinging right along with the typical avian bravado. Eventually, a next passing bird of prey will catch the rival's eye and present him with an opportunity to report to all the forest folk how his incredible fitness and well groomed armour frightened the killer away; and so the insults and sarcastic admonishments boil up again in haste. Blaring shrieks and yowls sound off across the valley as lightening, a thunder clap, mark the boundary between seeing and believing. Heavy clouds pour in and a tropical downpour floods out everything ,if just for a deafeningly bewildering moment, before sunlight breaks through and warmth dominates once again. So is the typical subtropical day in Yala National Forest in Sri Lanka . An enormous tree branch splits somewhere off in the forest. Every peafowl in a few miles radius is reporting their perspective on it.

Invariably, there will be adult, train bearing males in each of several veritable giants. Each giant tree the permanent territory of one family unit.

Judging from the air of confidence that old peacock imbues on his high perch, one of the loudest and most visible creatures in all the forest, the Indian Peacock, has evidently, little to fear from birds of prey or quadruped predators. Ground predators can scarcely approach without his taking notice and sounding the alarm that heeds all prospective prey to take heed and escape.

He shrieks out his warnings with no little defiance and yet there is no mistaking the hauntingly plaintive quality of those subsequent contact calls, whereby he voices concerns about the well-being and location of his family. He is raising his voice and rattling his sabers, mourning the tragic death of a favorite hen or chick. His message is unequivocal and unambiguous. His is an immortal presence. Just as the ancients have espoused over all these centuries, it's difficult not to concur- to agree.

Our peacock most certainly is a harbinger of all that is fearless and breathtaking about the true vital essence of sustained love. His is a passion for life, not subdued but invigorated by that certain intuition of impending tragedy -of suffering to which all those destined to the mortal coil are chained. His passion for life resonates throughout the forest and everywhere he watches over, half-eagle half-angel, one eye on the world...his billowing train affords him that rare privilege, to stand completely exposed, announcing his presence to all with full faculty of their senses.



The question remains, how can such a large and apparently unwieldy creature survive in these harsh environs? Isn’t it easy prey?

His DNA evidences the peacocks' origins thread back some 37 million years to an obscure geological moment during the Mid-Eocene period when the peafowls most ancient ancestors split from the Megapode ,Cracid , Guineafowl , Toothed Woodquail branches of the Gallinaceous bird supraorder. This makes the peacock sole surviving representative of one of the oldest surviving lineages even in this ancient refugia forest. His history is deeper than that of most of the birds flitting effortlessly by in the surrounding tree tops, or wading on long legs with great bills pointed downwards along the riverbanks. He is older than the birds of prey soaring on high and the big cats which he is loath to encounter. His lineage is nearly as old as the giant forest tree on which he stands, a ghost as it were. Some of these emergent trees towering so many hundreds of feet over the upper canopy of the forest are all that remains of primeval rainforests that have long since vanished, succeeded by wave after wave of newer forest types composed of different tree species- adapted to the ever-changing environment. So, our peacock is a very ancient creature indeed.


Its survival and life history are so badly neglected in literature, it's one of those mysterious ironies- how can so well "known" and immediately recognizable a creature, be so poorly understood? We may as well afford ourselves with an opportunity to learn of some little known attributes of the true nature of this bird as it does relate to our perpetual fascination with it.

This is all comes back around to the issue of growth stages and developmental phases we’ve discussed earlier. Please bear with me.

It requires a great deal of energy and one might say foresight to create a viable nest.
It must be carefully selected in the safest of locations for the incubation rate is ~29 days. It takes up to two weeks for the peahen to deposit enough eggs to form a clutch large enough for that greatest of investments and examples of self-sacrifice in the bird world, the incubation period. There is no other time in all the life of a bird that lives on or near the ground as when it is on its nest or tending its chicks.

Remember, if chicks fail to develop properly in the shell she is doomed. One broken egg will attract the legions of ants and nest predators hunting tirelessly to feast on just such a meal. All her eggs maybe be destroyed if one dies and she may be killed as well.
Not only will the peahen need the most nutritious food items ( small animals, buds, shoots, invertebrates) to provide adequate nutrients in the egg yolks that will nurture developing embryos, she must also drink generous amounts of clean water to produce the most viable clutch.
Moreover, if she fails to escape detection her eggs will be destroyed before she can incubate. She is also made more vulnerable to predation, herself, moving to and from the nest, generally a few hundred yards away from the daily comings and goings of her ever vigilante social unit. Consequently, after a peahen has deposited her egg and is ready to rejoin her social guild for more foraging; or if she's been setting for too many days under a merciless sun in scalding heat- she requires a chaperon to accompany her to the river’s edge or rejoin her with her family guild.

In preparation for her reunion, the peahen carefully covers her eggs in dead grass and leaves, and silently threads her way along the least predictable path away from her nest.

Occasionally, she has been known to even backtrack for a few yards before creeping so close to the ground her breast fairly touches the ground for several more yards in yet another direction, only to finally catapult herself into a noisy flight that carries her raucously upwards and outwards onto some elevated roost that affords her a good perspective of where she’s been and where she’s going.
From this perch she calls stridently for her mate to come to her side. And it should go without saying, that in nature, there is almost never an occasion that he does not materialize beside her. If he does not some recently widowed male or unpaired subadult will.

If she’s old enough and has successfully reared clutches of chicks in previous years, she will often be joined in her replenishment forays by her non-reproductive aged progeny as well. In this photo, you can clearly see an adult pair of Indian Peafowl with their chicks of the previous year. As this is a watering hole, it may well be that the male has chaperoned his mate there, only to be joined by their surviving chicks. Of course, in the wild, the adult male is responsible for the well-being of his offspring while his mate is off incubating a new brood. The supposed "harem" of the wild Indian Peafowl we so often read about in literature, is more generally comprisedof his own, non-reproductive aged offspring than a flourish of peahens he intends to woo with his quill music.
Note too, the position the adult hen is taking against her daughter who has just recently moulted her upper tail coverts.
Peahens of the year are tolerated (if barely) by their mothers only because they are not yet sexually mature. Consequently, the young hens moult their taupe shaded coverts about the same time their mothers are beginning to nest. The juvenile birds will help to rear their younger siblings by haunting the peripheries of their new siblings' foraging activites; acting as sentinels and by offering food that they have captured.

Additionally, what may first appear as a"fan dance" to the uninitiated, is not so much a courtship competition, but rather a highly ritualised demonstration of fitness and vigour. By spreading out his quills and flattening his neck, tucking vulnerable parts of his body away behind shivering shields, advertising his sharp kicking thorns surmounted on powerful legs, he is actually demonstrating to his loyal mate (as well as to other members of the family unit and larger guild) his defense mechanisms. Here is the most attuned postural response in his behavioral repertoire. Yes, even and perhaps especially, the peacock has a whole treasure trove of anti-predatory behaviors with which it will defend itself; its family unit and territories through shape shifting and frontal facing down- the herding of predatory reptiles and other forest vermin intent to either eat his progeny or compete for the same favored food items. These are survival tactics that peafowl utilise in their perpetual arms race against large, predatory reptiles. These behaviors are also useful against small non-obligatory predators of their offspring and against many larger potential threats. It is a bewildering sight to behold for most animals and difficult to assault successfully. After all, a dragonbird must hold its ground, to run and to flee at the first threat is to make oneself vulnerable to predation-. More to this topic later.

Once the peahen is more stationary on her eggs and is setting without interruption, her mate becomes ever more vigilante of her nest site, becoming more or less earthbound by the location of his nest.

Occasionally he paces the borders of his territory, which is somewhat analogous with an ever moving force field. He expects and even demands that other train bearing males and subadults remain at a specific distance from him at all times. In the event that he comes into contact with another male of his guild, he will like many a temporarily deranged expectant human dad, begin quarreling with his neighbor. He's testy and impetuous at this stage of the year and for good reason. These ritualised battles are mostly for show and may serve to draw the attention of potential predators as well. Regardless, sparring with neighbors can exhaust the birds and the two inevitably retire, often together, to rest and preen in some shady spot for a few hours.
Getting back to the peahen and her vulnerability on the nest, the peacock will make his rounds about his nesting territory a few times every day. Not in such a way as to draw attention to himself naturally. Very subtle gutteral knocking sounds and high whistling wheeps are emitted by the male as he forages a few feet or yards from his juvenile offspring.

Where once his territories were as wide and tall as he could possibly lay claim to, while on high, they have shrunk back down to earth and encompass but a fraction of what he once jealously protected as his own domain. He's more of an intense presence now.

Standing in tall grass the nest defending peacock's silhouette makes for a strange sight. He stretches himself vertically to the greatest degree his body can possibly afford, surveying the grasslands around him.
This is his stationary alert posture. Elongated plumes with squarish ends at his upper hind neck are erected. This results in the formation of a cobra-like nuchal hood .

This is all the more accentuated by the deflation and flattening of remaining neck plumes and the manner in which he holds his head, surmounted sturdily on its long, slender and undoubtedly serpentine question mark.

This trait is even more pronounced in some of the Dragonbirds. For example, the Malay Peafowl.

Irregardless of the species, the territorial male peafowl is a formidable presence throughout his nest defense phase. Attenuating neck to what would appear its breaking point, the peacock dutifully surveys what will soon be his chicks’ foraging grounds. He intentionally modifies the trails of small forest denizens like pygmy forest pigs, rabbits and mouse deer. He stomps and rakes portions of these hoofpaths clear. He then takes up a foot patrol terrifying every intruder that he can readily intimidate and/or injure with his powerful legs armed as they are in their kicking thorns and sharp nailed feet.
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When the chicks are close to hatching or for the first weeks after they’ve hatched, the peacock perches fairly close to the ground for most of the hours in the day. He will often sound off alarms with an almost obscene volume repetitivity . He’s often to be seen running about erratically in what can only be described as an diversionary distraction display.

This is when the humidity is quite high, the peahen is obliged to hold herself up over her eggs in order to cool and relieve them of excess moisture. The chicks are beginning to pip and nest predators like the many Varanids (monitor lizard species) can pick up cues from the otherwise odorless nest. These great lizards can also hear the vibrations of the chicks breaking out of their shells. The peahen is never more vulnerable than at this point. Here is when the fully trained male makes the most of his presence.

 

[deerman]

Yep, now do the same with the wild turkey.....Diet about the same, young stay with the mother as long as peachicks do. Mature about the same.

Peafowl and Turkey have so many thing in common.........

Nice photo shop on some of those pics.......