Question on the feral (I think?) peafowl that live in my neighborhood. I don’t have great pictures of all - but why do some hens have bottle green heads and some have sapphire blue heads? They all hang out together and love to visit our front water dish with meal worms service. The two on the top are females, both have raised offspring. The lower one with a baby now is all brown, which is also new to me.
The two circled in red are males, the two circled in yellow are hens. The hens will still have green on the neck, including the one you think is all brown (she only looks all brown in this photo because you can't see her neck). Yearling males will have green on the neck as well, which is why you might have mistaken the top red one for a hen, he may have been hanging around his younger siblings while mom raised them.
The top red circle raised 3 chicks earlier this year and 2 last year. Never has grown a train. That’s why I was thinking they’re a hen. Goofy boy!
Do you have photos of him actually raising chicks on his own whole looking like a male? Are you 100% certain it's the same bird? How are you tracking ID?
I ask because with feral flocks, group composition can change. You might see the same hen traveling with a group of 2-3 others once and 2-3 others another time but they might not be the exact same birds both times. Without ID bands or other hard tracking methods, it's entirely possible you saw different birds and thought they were the same birds because it was the same ratio of hens and cocks.
It's ALSO possible that you have either an intersex bird or a hen with a (now) defunct ovary that will be switching to male plumage over a 3ish year span. It doesn't happen often but it does happen.
What doesn't really happen, at least as far as I've seen, is males raising chicks. They don't sit on nests, they don't show chicks what to eat, they don't cover them at night. They tolerate them, but they are not paternal like some bird species. As uncommon as it is to see intersex and transitioning hens, it's a million times less likely that a male would be randomly raising chicks on his own. So, if you have documentation of something that's never been documented in wild or captive peafowl before, I would be interested to see the evidence.
