Peacocks in India

BirdNote^®

Peacocks in India
The Blue Peacock

Written by Dennis Paulson

This is BirdNote.
[Indian music]
You’ve probably heard the call of a male peacock in a park or zoo. [Calls of male Blue Peacock] But the bird we’re hearing is calling at the edge of a dry forest in northern India, where it is a native. In fact, the peacock is the national bird of India.
 [Male peacock call]
Peacocks have been domesticated for thousands of years, and they now occur almost everywhere. To see wild peacocks, though, you’ll need to go to India or Sri Lanka. Small groups of them come out of the forest each morning and evening to feed. As with other members of the pheasant family, male peacocks are polygamous, each one consorting with a small group of females and their young.
Where they’re hunted, peacocks are shy and rarely seen, and give loud alarm calls when startled. Where protected, however, they become as tame as domestic birds. You can admire the fabulous plumage of the males at close range. Or see and hear a Blue Peacock on video at our website, BirdNote.org.
[Male peacock call]
[Indian music]
Support for BirdNote comes from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, presenting its new “Bird Photography” online course, featuring Melissa Groo. Learn more at academy.allaboutbirds.org.
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Call of the Blue Peafowl provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by L.M. Macaulay.
Musical selection from Gat in Teental on the album An Exquisite Raag, performed by Shivkumar Sharma on santoor and Zakir Hussain on tabla recorded live at Stuttgart, Germany 1994.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2011 Tune In to Nature.org   May 2011/2016/2020   Narrator: Mary McCann

ID# 050807BLPEKPLU     BLPE-01b