The National Bird

                                    

The Indian peafowl is the national bird of India. Peacock is inordinately entangling with Indian culture & history. This is a common bird of Manas National Park.

It is the resident of India, southeast Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan. They are long and slender with a long face that has black and white colors on it. They have a short and sharp bill. They tend to be very social and their groups are referred to as parties.  

They will also do well isolated, but it is usually, the older males that aren’t with a group.

 The Male has a blue neck and breast and spectacular glossy green train. Significantly, the long ‘tail’ of peacock known as a ‘train’. The train consist of highly elongated tail coverts. The train of it can take up more than 40% of the overall body.

The females lack elongated upper tail coverts; has whitish face and throat and white belly. Primarily, the female is brown in color.

Male peafowl is known for their piercing calls and their extravagant plumage. Usually, male peafowl erects their trains to form a shimmering fan in their display to females. There are many hypotheses with male nuptial dancing to attract females. One researcher observed that the number of eyespots in the train predicted a male's mating success.

Interestingly, Peahens pay careful attention to the different parts of a peacock's train during his display. The lower train is usually evaluated during close-up courtship, while the upper train is more of a long-distance attraction signal. Actions such as train rattling and wing shaking also kept the peahens' attention.

The female also displays her plumage to ward off female competition or signal danger to her young. Peafowl is forest birds that nest on the ground, but roost in trees.  All species of peafowl are believed to be polygamous.

Males will do all they can to get the attention of females for mating. A male may display his feathers and prance around to get the female attracted to him. Once mating has occurred the female will find materials to create a nest. The males will go looking for other females that they can also mate with.

It can take up to 28 days for the eggs to hatch. The young will grow very quickly and within a few days, they can walk around on their own. It will take them a few months though to be able to fly. Females tend to stay close to each other and they will help each other with caring for the offspring. In the wild, they can live for up to 20 years

Chicks of both sexes in all the species are cryptically colored. They vary between yellow and tawny, usually with patches of darker brown or light tan and "dirty white" ivory.

Peafowl are omnivores and eat mostly plants, flower petals, seed heads, insects and other arthropods, reptiles, and amphibians. Wild peafowl look for their food scratching around in leaf litter either early in the morning or at dusk.

They retreat to the shade and security of the woods for the hottest portion of the day. These birds are not picky and will eat almost anything they can fit in their beak and digest. They actively hunt insects like ants, crickets and termites; millipedes; and other arthropods and small mammals. Indian peafowl also eats small snakes.

Peacock is amazingly beautiful as it has long bonding with our cultural history of Indian Subcontinent. Let us join hand to conserve this natural heritage.