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Royal Blues
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
India Blue Peafowl (Pavo cristatus)
Other Names: Indian Peafowl, Blue Peafowl, Common Peafowl
Subspecies: Monotypic, but a host of mutations exist.
Range: Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. Many feral populations exist throughout the world.
Habitat: Varied, deciduous forests, cultivated lands and near villiages.
Description: Unmistakable, could only possibly be confused with the Green Peafowl. Males are large, with a long ornate tail used for courtship. Distinguishable from Pavo muticus in having a royal blue neck and breast; facial skin is white, crest is fan shaped. Immature males have varied plumage, but will have the fan-shaped crest and mottled blue upperparts. Second year males show a smaller tail, often without ocelli. By the third year, they reach full plumage and sexual maturity. The tail may continue to grow for another two to three years. Males will molt and lose their tails each year in late summer.
Description, Female: Rather drab in comparison to the male. Facial skin and crest shape same as in male, but crest is brown. The throat is white, breast and back of neck green; abdomen pale buff to cream, rest of body light brownish-gray.
Status in Wild: Very common in most areas of the natural range.
Interesting Facts: The National Bird of India. This species is sometimes simply called the Peacock; the peacock is the male, females are known as peahens and the young are peachicks. Pavo is Latin for peafowl. cristatus is Latin for crested. Peafowl have been kept in captivity for many centuries and have been reported in ancient Egyptian, Roman and Greek history.
The male is called a peacock, the female a peahen. The Indian Peacock has beautiful iridescent blue-green plumage. The upper tail coverts are enormously elongated and ornate with an eye at the end of each feather. The female plumage is a mixture of dull green, grey and iridescent blue, with the greenish-grey predominating. In the breeding season, females can be told apart from the lack of the long tail feathers also known as the train. Peahens can be distinguished from males in the non-breeding season by the green colour of the neck as opposed to the blue on the males.
Peafowl are most notable for the male's extravagant tail also known as a train, a result of sexual selection, which it displays as part of courtship. This train is in reality not the tail but the enormously elongated upper tail coverts. The tail itself is brown and short as in the peahen. |
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