Green Peafowl

Green Peafowl Pavo Muticus was one of the undoubted highlights of our time in Thailand with seventeen of these beautiful birds being seen. I have selected the appropriate paragraph from the Rockjumper Birding tour report in which Glen Valentine, our leader describes the occasion when we saw the birds for the first time.

“After an early breakfast, we reunited with our wonderful drivers and struck out for some early morning birding at the nearby King’s Project (Huai Hong Krai), where our main target species was the spectacular and rare Green Peafowl. Shortly after arriving, we were in business when four of these stunning pheasants flew across a clearing right in front of us, showing their brilliant, emerald flight feathers before diving into the dense forest understorey, not to be seen again during the course of the morning.”

We were standing on the causeway at the end of the main lake when the birds, all females, flew across the lake. Luckily, I was sufficiently awake that I pointed my camera and took a series of shots of the final bird of the party just before it entered the forest.

This majestic species has a very rapidly declining and severely fragmented population, primarily owing to intense habitat conversion and high hunting levels. Negative population trends and habitat fragmentation are projected to continue. The species therefore qualifies as Endangered.

This conspicuous species was once common and widespread across Asia, but is now only patchily distributed in Yunnan, China, west Thailand, Laos, south Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma and on Java, Indonesia. Green Peafowl is thought to be extinct in north-east India and Bangladesh, and is known to be extinct in Malaysia. Between 5,000 and 10,000 individuals are estimated to survive.

Green Peafowl are found in a wide range of habitats including primary and secondary forest, both tropical and subtropical, as well as evergreen and deciduous. They may also be found amongst bamboo, on grasslands, savannah, scrub and farmland edge. On our final day of the tour, we saw more of this remarkable species and I’ll allow Glen to describe it: “the absolute show-stopper was undoubtedly a flock of thirteen Green Peafowl that fed unperturbed in a grassy clearing at the forest edge and included an immaculate adult male in spectacular, impeccable plumage!”

Reference: BirdLife; Arkive