Turkeys and....aaahhhh...Peacock?

[Dutch]

Wonderful dinner tonight with family, great turkey and a bit of a surprise to share.

 

There seems to be a lot of wild turkeys out around my parent's place, and I don't mean the neighbours. They often wander through the fields, along the fence lines grazing around. Happens all the time, just a bit of a surprise in the flock this afternoon - a PEACOCK! That's right, I though one of the bunch looked a little off and I was thinking it may be a small male with slightly different colouring.

 

As they wandered closer to the house, we could definitely tell it was a peacock hen! Grabbed the binocs, just to make sure and definitely saw the tuft of show feathers on the top of the head, light grey breast and greenish coloured hood of feathers. She looked really at home strutting around with the rest of the turkeys. In all there were 7 females and this lone peacock.

 

Funny thing is she stayed right in the middle of the turkeys and if she fell behind or out of the pack at all, she would fly right back in the middle. My uncle, who's a hunter said the peacock must have 'added' something to the flock or they probably would have forced it somehow to leave. I assumed since it was smaller and really stuck out the turkeys would keep it around as it would probably be the first bird attacked by a predator.

 

You may think I'm nuts, but there were 4 others that saw this and the birds were only about 20-30 yards away. Still shaking my head about this one.

 

Unfortunately, no digital camera around to take a pic, but I may go out tomorrow around the same time to see if they pay another visit.

 

Never know - maybe next easter, or come thanksgiving, there may be a new kind of bird on the table...wild Pea-turkey, or a Turcock!

Edited April 12, 2009 by Dutch

[douG]

Hmmmmmm, turcock.

[Spiel]

Cool, I've heard of this once or twice before, though I've never seen it. But I do know that she is refered to as a "peahen".

 

Took this quote from nationalgeographic.com

 

"The term "peacock" is commonly used to refer to birds of both sexes. Technically, only males are peacocks. Females are peahens, and together, they are called peafowl."

 

I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere.