Female Peacock

 Female Peacock

Female peacock is also known as peahen. Peacock, commonly known as peafowl is a beautiful, large, colorful bird. Male peafowl is called peacock and female peafowl is called peahen and the babies are called peachicks. Both are also called peacock. A group of peacocks is known as an ostentation and also called muster There are three species in the Phasianidae family, Indian peafowl or blue peafowl (Pavo cristatus), Green peafowl (Pavo muticus) and Congo peafowl.

Blue Female Peacock

Female peacock or peahen is less attractive. Peahens are smaller than peacocks. Their length is around 95cm and weight is 2.75 to 4kg. Female peacock has duller appearance than male peacock. Female peacocks are brown, cream or grey in colour. They have brown head and a crest on their head.

Female peacock’s body is covered with dull brown feathers but the underpart is white in colour. Their chests are covered with dark brown feathers, glossed with green. Their lower neck is metallic green.

Female peacock has no train. Their short tails are dull brown in colour. As they have no trains, they cannot spread their feathers of their trains. Female peacocks only display their short tail feathers to give a signal of danger to their chicks. They also display their short tail feathers when they fighting with other peahens to get a potential mate.

Green Female Peacock

Green female peacock is dull green in colour. Female peacock’s neck and chest is covered with metallic green feathers, resemble scales. Their neck scales fringed is copper-coloured but their back, primaries and alula are more barring.

They have no train but the tail coverts are long and green in colour. They have brown triangle patch below the eyes towards the eyebrows and have yellow crescent beside the ears. Their lesser wings coverts are blue in colour and have no triangle of scaly feathers at the wing shoulder.

Female peacock has crest on its head with wider plumes. Their bill is blackish-grey and have dark brown eyes.

The length of female peacock is 1m to 1.1m and weight is about 1.1kg. They have a loud call of aow-AA repeated at short intervals.

Female Congo Peacock

Congo female peacock is chestnut-brown in colour. Their belly part is black and their back is green in colour. Peahen or female peacock is 60cm to 63cm in length. They have dull brown crest

India and Sri Lanka are the homes Blue peacock and Green peacock lives in Java and Myanmar. Congo peacock is found in Congo basin, central Africa.

As female peacocks have no trains so they are less weight than male peacock so they can fly and their speed can reach up to 10 miles per hour.

During their breeding season, male peacocks display their beautiful trains and feathers to show their sexual and physical fitness to the peahens because the peahens select their mate with large, colourful shiny train and feathers as a mate. They display their courtship by spreading their iridescent train in a fan shape and shake the feathers to produce a rattling noise for attracting female peacock's attention. Then a peahen or a female peacock walks through the leks and examines the displays and the feathers of the peacocks of the leks to select a mate.

During their breeding season, a female peacock lays one or two clutches of eggs. The peahen scrapes a hole in the ground to build her nest, which is hidden in the wood or leaves and bushes. Sometimes they build the nest on the tree to protect their eggs and chicks from predators. They lay an egg every other day which is 3 times larger than hen’s egg. Each clutch contains 4 to 8 eggs and the colour of the eggs is ivory or tan. After laying eggs, peahen or female peacock sits on the eggs to hatch. When the female peacock sits on the first clutch, she does not lay the second clutch of eggs. This time she leaves her nest only for collecting food. After 28 to 30 days, the chicks come out of the eggs. The chicks are called peachicks.

Facts about Peacock

 Female peacock teaches her chicks to eat food. She picks a small piece of food and drops it in front of the chicks, or she points it out with making a sound. Sometimes she holds a piece of food in her beak and the chicks grab it from their mother’s beak. Within two weeks, they able to forage food and fly. Female peacock or peahens spend most of their time near their offspring and strongly protect them from predators.

Their favorite foods are small snakes, small creatures like frogs, lizards, insects, ants, termites, locust, leaves, fruits, vegetables, flower petals, seeds, grains etc. In captivity, they eat cat food, cheese, nuts, cooked rice, and much other supplemented food which has high protein.

Peacocks are threatened by extinction, smuggling, hunting and poaching. The poachers kill the peacock for their beautiful feathers and meat. Due to deforestation, peacocks do not get sufficient food, breeding habitat, shelter and pushes them towards extinction.

Causes of Deforestation

Female peacock’s dull brown feathers help them to camouflage in her environment which protect them from predators and hunters also.