Peacock, also known as the peafowl.

Peacocks, also known as the peafowl, are any of three species of resplendent birds of the pheasant family. Strictly, the male is a peacock, and the female is a peahen; both are of peafowl origin. The two most recognizable species of peafowl are the blue, or Indian, peacock of India and Sri Lanka, and the green, or Javanese, peacock, found from Myanmar (Burma) to Java. The Congolese peacock, which inhabits the forested interior of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was discovered in 1936 after a search that began in 1913 with the finding of a single feather.

In blue and green peacocks, the male has a 90–130-cm (1m approx.) body and 150-cm (1.5m) train of tail feathers that are coloured a brilliant metallic green/dark green. This train is mainly formed of the bird’s upper tail coverts, which are enormously elongated. Each feather is tipped with an iridescent eyespot that is ringed with blue and bronze. In courtship displays, the cock elevates his tail, which lies under the train, thus elevating the train and bringing it forward. At the climax of this display, the tail feathers are vibrated, giving the feathers of the train a shimmering appearance and making a rustling sound.

The blue peacock’s body feathers are mostly a metallic blue-green mixture. The green peacock, with a train much like that of the blue one, has green and bronze body feathers. The hens of both species are green and brown and are almost as big as the male but lack the train and the head ornament. In the wild, both species live in open lowland forests & wetlands, flocking by day and roosting high in trees at night. During the breeding season, the male forms a harem of two to five hens, each of which lays four to eight whitish eggs in a depression in the ground. The eggs are incubated by the hen until they hatch some 26-30 days later. The chicks have all of their feathers when they emerge from their eggs and are capable of flight roughly one to two weeks after hatching. Most blue and green peafowl become sexually mature at age three. However, some male blue (Indian – Sri Lankan) peafowl have been known to breed as early as age two.