Pavo (bird)

Peafowl
Indian blue peacock
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Galliformes
Family:	Phasianidae
Genus:	Pavo Linnaeus, 1758
Species
Pavo cristatus Pavo muticus

The Asiatic peafowl is a kind of bird. They are the genus Pavo from the Phasianidae family. They originate from Southeast Asia, especially India, and Pakistan. In Pakistan, it is the provincial/regional bird of the province of the Punjab.

• Genus Pavo
  • Blue peafowl or Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus)
  • Green peafowl (Pavo muticus)

The male is called a peacock, the female a peahen.

The males are very colorful, and they have very long train feathers (or tail feathers), which they can move up like a fan. Females are less colorful, and do not have the long train-feathers. Both the male and the female have a little "crown" of feathers on their head. Males show their train feathers to court a female peafowl, or to scare other animals away by making them afraid.

Peafowl are omnivorous and eat plant parts, flower petals, seeds, insects, and small vertebrates, like reptiles and amphibians.

• 
  A male green peafowl fanning his train feathers.
• 
  A female blue peafowl.
• 
  A blue peacock courting a blue peahen.

Peacock in the Woods - 1907, painting by Abbott Handerson Thayer. Thayer suggested that the function of the ornate tail was camouflage