Peacocks: Post 10 - Year 1, Spring and Summer 2025.
Updated: 3 days ago
Greening up the run.
With the return of the warmer weather Mr.Tumnus and his hens enjoyed their first Spring and Summer. You can see they have become more clearly distinguishable in colouring. Mr.Tumus now clearly blue rather than green but not yet mature enough to have the characteristic peacock train. (Sexual maturity for peafowl is normally once they are two years old).
The video above shows them eating some grass cuttings. You can see that the bamboo hedge along the left side of the run is still unestablished. The planted shrubs are still small. The peacocks have pecked the leaves off quite a few of the shrubs including the blueberry bushes. The ground is quite stony and bare.
But as Spring turned to Summer the new plants began to flourish and things were definitely greening up.
A good year.
The hen that had been unwell over Christmas 2024 - with the respiratory infection or gape-worm - seemed to perk up at the end of February 2025 and has been in good health ever since.
With the aviary and the run complete I didn't have any further work that was pressing and I was able to let things take their course for a while and enjoy having their company in the garden. Very nice sometimes to sit in the enclosure with them and read a book whilst they poke about.
Noise.
I did have to invest some time and effort in training them to keep the noise down. Most of the time they don't make any noise anyway. However at dusk and dawn they sometimes did. Sometimes very early in the morning - around daybreak.
I kept a bamboo cane handy. I would ignore honks or low volume noise, but if they started to crow loudly - the characteristic "caw" - I would give them a little prod with the bamboo cane. The male definitely took much more diligence and persistence than the females but by and large the noise has been fine. A little noisy around mating season (June) but most of the year they don't have much to call about.
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