Blue Indian Peafowl No Longer Prettify the Artistic Ellora Caves

Summary: Blue Indian peafowl appear no more in areas around the architecturally, artistically amazing Ellora Caves in northwest-central India's Maharashtra state.

"Peacock in the Woods," 1907 wildlife painting by American artist and naturalist Abbott Handerson Thayer (Aug. 12, 1849-May 29, 1921), reveals "obliterative" designs of blue Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus) that blend the peacock's color patterns with forest colors to achieve effective camouflage; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Blue Indian peafowl are assured of stable populations even as they are absent from the Ellora Caves rain gardens, Ellora Caves sanctuary gardens and Ellora Caves teak forest of Maharashtra state, India.

Blue Indian peafowl (mor locally, Pavo cristatus scientifically) belong among traditional Ellora Caves wildlife even as the twenty-first century bares rare evidence of their being there. The Pavo cristatus (from Latin pāvō, "peacock" and cristātus, "crested"), classified by Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778), no longer charms this northwest-central Maharashtran corner. January through April breeding and April through September nesting seasons drive 28-day incubations of yearly clutches of blue Indian peahens of four to 12 brown-buff eggs.

Blue Indian peachicks emerge with newborn 3.63-ounce (103-gram) weights and with feathers that enable them to fly within one week of hatching in grass-lined, ground-scooped nests.

Six to 9-pound (2.72 to 4.08-kilogram) blue Indian peahens flourish brown feet, each with one backward-fitted, three forward-fitted toes; brown legs; and brown crestless, train-less plumage.

Physically and sexually mature three-plus-year-old blue Indian peahens garner 33.86 to 39.37-inch (96 to 100-centimeter) head-body lengths and 12.79 to 14.76-inch (32.5 to 37.5-centimeter-) long tails. Male blue Indian peafowl have fan-crested, spatula-tipped, wire-like feathers; brown-gray legs; and gray-brown feet with three forward-grasping toes and, below a metatarsal spur, one backward-grasping toe. Back, not tail, plumage institutes their rustling train of 200-plus elongated, upper-tail coverts as basal covers, tipped with iridescent blue and bronze-ringed eyespots, to tail feathers.

Physically and sexually mature three-plus-year-old male blue Indian peafowl journey through six-plus-year life cycles with 55.12 to 62.99-inch (140 to 160-centimeter-) long trains during breeding months.

Physically and sexually mature two-plus-year-old male blue Indian peafowl know 35.43 to 90.55-inch (90 to 230-centimeter) head-body and 13.78 to 19.69-inch (35 to 50-centimeter) tail lengths.

Physically and sexually mature two-plus-year-old male blue Indian peafowl log 8.82 to 13.23-pound (4 to 6-kilogram) body weights and 51.18 to 62.99-inch (130 to 160-centimeter) wingspans. They make loud, multiple-note, multiple-sound repetitions with far-carrying, penetrating ka-aan, kok-kok, may-awe and pia-ow calls and manage the alarm call honk! when predatory people menace them. Their nutritional requirements necessitate ants, locusts, termites, ticks, worms; berries, crops, grains, petals, seeds, shoots, tubers; frogs, lizards, snakes such as cobras (Ophiophagus hannah); and rodents.

Omnivorous (from Latin omnis, "all" and -vorus, "-eating") blue Indian peafowl obtain bamboo (Dendrocalamus), buckthorn (Ziziphus), grass (Panicum), figs (Ficus), groundnuts (Arachis) and Indian petunia (Strobilanthes).

Blue Indian peafowl protect themselves by daytime refuges in predator-free forest undergrowth; daytime, small-group forages over open bushland, forest and rain-forest floors; and night-time upper-canopy roosts.

Blue Indian peafowl queue up in open lowland forests with mixed deciduous, evergreen, scrubby undergrowth and on cultivated lands through 6,561.68-foot (2,000-meter) altitudes above sea level. They remain the national bird of India, where Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism respect them within their endemic India-only Arakan Hills through Himalayan and Karakoram mountainous ranges. Communication and transportation networks, globally warmed climate change, habitat degradation and fragmentation, light and noise pollution and visitor facilities perhaps scare away Ellora blue Indian peafowl.

Blue Indian peafowl feathers no longer turn out treatments for cobra (Naja naga) and rock (Trimeresurus malabaricus) and Russell (Daboia russelii) viper bites in northwest Maharashtra.

Male Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus), known as peacock, courts female, known as peahen; April 28, 2010: Dick Daniels (http://carolinabirds.org/), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

"Peacock in the Woods," 1907 wildlife painting by American artist and naturalist Abbott Handerson Thayer (Aug. 12, 1849-May 29, 1921), reveals "obliterative" designs of blue Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus) that blend the peacock's color patterns with forest colors to achieve effective camouflage; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Concealing-coloration_in_the_animal_kingdom;_an_exposition_of_the_laws_of_disguise_through_color_and_pattern-_being_a_summary_of_Abbott_H._Thayer%27s_discoveries_(1909)_(14765066925).jpg

Male Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus), known as peacock, courts female, known as peahen; April 28, 2010: Dick Daniels (http://carolinabirds.org/), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Common_Peafowl_(Pavo_cristatus)_RWD2.jpg

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