World Peacock Day: The Peacock
The 15th November is World Peacock Day. To mark this, and the 350th anniversary of the publication of Francis Willughby’s Ornithologia, this post will focus on the description of the peacock in Ornithologia. Willughby called it the Peacock or Pavo, but today it is officially known as the Indian Peafowl or Pavo cristatus.
In Ornithologia, it was written that the peacock was so well known everywhere, and so sufficiently distinguished by the length and glorious eye-like spots of its tail alone, that it was perchance superfluous to bestow too many words on its description. However, it was specifically commented that peacocks were pestilent things in gardens that did a world of mischief. It was also noted that it was said that the peacock had the feathers of an Angel, the voice of a Devil and the guts of a Thief.
The male was described as having a head, neck and upper breast of a deep blue colour. Its head had a serpentine manner and was adorned with two oblong white spots, one above and the other below the eyes. The one below was smaller but thicker and succeeded by a black spot. It had a tuft on the top of its head. It was not an entire tuft but rather consisted of naked, tender green shafts of feathers that bore on their tops something like lily-flowers of the same colour. The bill was whitish with wide nostrils and was a little crooked at the tip.
The neck was long and very slender. The back was a pale ash colour that was sprinkled with many transverse black spots. The rump was a deep green and the feathers composing it were short and scale-like. The belly was bluish-green, inclining toward dusky-black in the lower belly. The legs and feet were ash coloured, sprinkled with black spots and armed with spurs.
In Ornithologia, it was written that the tail appeared to be divided into two. First there was a lesser tail. The feathers of this were of a dusky colour and did not stand up like the long feathers. These lesser feathers made an entire tail by themselves that was similar to that of other birds. Second were the long feathers, which by a different muscle enabled them to stand erect. The long feathers came from the rump with the lesser feathers beneath them, as if made by Nature to support them.
It is now known that the anatomical mechanics of the tail described in Ornithologia were accurately deduced. The long feathers are not actually tail feathers but rather elongated tail covert feathers and the “lesser” tail is actually the true tail, which does physically support the long train. The peacock also has very powerful muscles to enable the true tail to erect the decorative train.
In Ornithologia, the longer tail feathers were described as a chestnut colour that were beautified with extremely elegant gold lines that tended upward but ended in very deep green tips, which were forked like the tails of Swallows. The eyes or circular spots on the feathers consisted of four circles of different colours. The first circle was golden, the second chestnut, the third a deep green, which shone like chrysolite, and the fourth or middle was a sapphire spot that was almost the figure and size of a kidney bean.
The peahen was described as having little variety of colour. The crown of the head, crest, wings, back, belly, thigh and legs were dusky inclining to ash. However, on the top of the head were some small green spots. The feathers of the neck were green with a waved pattern and near the breast the extremities were white. The white spots above and below the eyes were larger in the peahen and the chin was wholly white.
It was noted in Ornithologia that sometimes a white variety of peacock could be found. These are now confirmed as not being a separate species but a result of leucism, a genetic mutation. In the wild, it occurs spontaneously in roughly 1 in 30,000. However, the trait is more common in captivity. This is partly because there is less risk of predators in captivity, which the white variety is more susceptible to. It is also partly because the gene is recessive and if two white peacocks are bred together, which happens more often in captivity, the trait breeds true.
Further Reading: John Ray, Francis Willughby’s Ornithologia, 1678, p.158. T27.
Author - Debbie Jordan, Middleton Hall Volunteer.
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