Pretty Peacocks in the Golden State
Celebrate the ancestral home of peafowl originally from India on an Indian-themed Peacock Day at Los Angeles County Arboretum, March 24, 2018. The famous Southern California birds are descendants of peafowl acquired in the late 1880s by wealthy businessman Elias (Lucky) Baldwin, who owned the arboretum grounds.
Like so many visitors, I have sat under the shade of a tree for summer concerts at the Arboretum, and heard the screeching of a peacock in a limb above as the concert band played on.
Even though peacocks are quite common in zoos and gardens throughout California, they never cease to make an impression both for their size, their feather displays and their behavior. A few national zoos have removed peafowl for aggressively trying to grab food from kids or other annoyances.
A love-hate peacock story exists in one Southern California town where peafowl have been a 100-year fixture documented by author Mary Jo Hazard in her book, “The Peacocks of Palos Verdes.”
From their screeching outside a bedroom window in the early morning to covering a rooftop with poop, some newcomers to a seeming paradise say they have an urge to kill the birds. A few years ago when numbers of Palos Verdes peacocks were found dead the event grabbed national headlines as a “whodunit” mystery.
April Herron, Associate Pastor at Rolling Hills Methodist Church, wrote about the birds in the January 17, 2018 edition of Palos Verdes Peninsula News: “The sight of peacocks strolling around in the road or posing on the lawn causes me to stop and admire the intense plumage.”
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