Tuesday, March 24, 2009

A Bevy Of Pavo Cristatus

From what I found out via Google, Pavo Cristatus is the species name for this bird, commonly known as Indian Peafowl or the Blue Peafowl. What I didn't know is that only the males are actually called a Peacock. The female is a peahen and the babies are peachicks. A group of them are called a bevy.

Well yesterday at
Murray Family Farms in Mettler, California, I got to see a bevy of them. I don't think I've seen anything so gorgeous. His iridescence reminded me of the photo of a Drake I took last year, but the richness of his colors blew that duck right out of the water!

There were at least ten of these blue peafowl, along with a few peahens roaming around as well. None of them displayed their plumes in true peacock "fan" fashion, but I did get to see them spread behind one of them as he took a little rest from being all beautiful. It's a little hard to see him through the fencing, but his "train" of tailfeathers was at least three feet long!


Come closer my friends and get a better look:

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful birds. Though noisy as hell -- at least the kind of peacokcs I've been around.

Anonymous said...

Hey - those look like the same peacocks/peafowl we saw in Mexico! They did "fan" for us, so I will try to email you a photo.

Jeni said...

Many, MANY, moons ago -in the dark ages that was my childhood, a neighbor about 7-8 doors up the street from us began to raise Peacocks. (Along with a lot of chickens, some turkeys too, maybe even a goose here and there.) It's a small village so no one objected to this. I had no idea what a peacock sounds like though until I awoke early, very, very early one morning and heard this strange noise. It sounded like someone somewhere in my vicinity must have been being beaten and was calling out to the neighborhood, "HELP! HELP!" Yeah, it was the peacocks!

all things bradbury said...

these birds are beautiful!...we spent 2 days in the shop in bakersfield last month, sure wish we'd know this place was there....it most definately goes on the "next time" list....thanks for the great pics and all the background info too....

Anonymous said...

Beautiful! Growing up I lived about 5 miles from a zoo. One of the peacocks got out once and actually was found in our backyard! They took him back though. It was just so weird!

Decorina said...

My neighborhood in Phoenix had one house with "watch birds" - they were peahens. Loved the noise they made - and no one could get anywhere near the house. Hmmmm, since the husband doesn't want me to get chickens, maybe I should just get some peahens.