The Dragon Bird { Green Peafowls

[clinton9]

Hi Resolution,
My drawing of green peafowl, was from I copied & re-drawing the wings & body of feral IB peacock.
On 13th October 2006, my friend shot a adult feral IB peacock on farm, and when I brought the dead peacock, I had measured the train, tail, wing feathers and legs, body, leg spurs, head, beak.
When I drawing the wing, I held the wing flatten, before I mounted the wing & train.
When wing and train had dried up during mounting, I studied & measured the wing and train carefully, I had drawn the feathers of train & wing feathers, I held the wing flatten, on a board.
The feral IB peafowls are not flightless as they are good fliers, but they are less willing to fly and seem lacked the ablily to fly for more than 1 mile unlike wild peafowls that can fly for 10+ miles max.

When I were in Far North, I had approached the feral peafowls (both IB and BS) in farm, but they were wary and flew away.
Then all feral peafowls flew for 30 yards, at 6 feet from ground and into bushes in a group, I can see their wings which are flapping for 25 yards before they soar, then flapping again. The last bird to fly away, was a adult BS peacock, which took off when I walked toward it. It flew away for 30 yards. I had photoed the flying peafowls, but to my disappointment my photoes turned to of I made a mistake of choose the far rangle, instead of close rangle, with birds as specks in photoes.

Due to lack of photoes of mounted opened wings and photoes of trains of green peafowls, I cannot make anymore illustrations of 11 races of green peafowls and there is nothing known about measurement of bodies, trains of green peafowls and there are no clear sorting of 11 races of green peacocks by colours and size. I do not know very much about races of green peafowls and I only just learnt about this. I only make more illustrations of IB & BS peafowls.

To sort 11 races of green peafowls, you need to collect 22 freshly dead peafowls (11 males & 11 females), and measure them, lengthes of trains, body, heads, wingspans, distances between beak tips and eyes, and study the colours & pattens of plumages & trains, wings, heads, plus weights.
You need to get DNA from blood, by collect the blood from veins under wings, and sort the races of green peafowls.
Plus taxidermy gearing as borax & knifes, to rub in the skins of peafowls, and for skinning the birds. Borax harden the skins.
Bodyfats and meats & brain, eyes & tongues, oil grands have to be removed from skins, before rub in borax.

Photograping the birds have to in overcast weather as bright sunlight during sunny days cause birds to be pale coloured in photoes, with shadows, while in shadow of forest the birds appear darker or black in photoes.
Best photoes come from photograping in overcasting weather when shy is covered in clouds, with good light.
Your back must be toward sun when photograpinging birds.

Beware the colours of painting of plate of 11 races of green peafowls for fast identification purposes, may not be correct colours, and lacked the train feathers. I noticed the plate had pavo imperator siamensis with wrong colour (green) on wing coverts.

Clinton.

 

[clinton9]

 

[clinton9]

Hi Resolution,
I think pavo imperator siamensis have orange primaries, as I did not know whether color of primaries of 2-3 races ? of wild IB peafowls and 11 races of green peacocks, were same colour or have diffenent colours.

Gap between tertaries and body, are not good idea as secondaries & terteries provide lift (stop birds from fall too fast), as you never seen flying birds with gaps between body and terteries and inner secondaries, unless birds are in moult and unless they are dropping from high air, to ground.
Peafowls do have gaps in wings, but only during moulting season, which last 340 days of wing moult for adult male peafowls.
Distances between terteries of both wings, become wider when wings are in full downstokes, and get narrower on upstokes.
There is no gaps in non-moulting flight feathers of this 1-year-old wild IB peacock in level flight.

Remember India were a big island and out to sea far from land of Asia, many million years ago, before it went crush onto Asia, caused the high Himalayas mountrains to grow high.
Until I became a member of BYC, and found you and I learnt from you about peafowls, July this year in Far North (New Zealand) I had been thought about green peafowls had flew for 20+ miles to a very big island which will become future India, then after many years they become BS peafowls, since there are no mammals to eat the creamy-coloured chicks.
When island get closer to Asia, the tigers, mammals swam across the narrowing sea and once get to islands, they ate BS peachicks as well as adult BS peahens, until numbers of BS were very low so Mother Nature bred the new mutation...IB peafowls and IB increase in numbers, so mammals found IB peafowls to be very wary and peahens had changed from white, to brown.
When India had crushed into Asia, IB peafowls are readily very wary of tigers and predators.
Genes for BS remained in DNA in blood of IB peafowls, for million years until 19 Centery (1880s) when BS peafowls arrived along IB peafowls.

Clinton.

 

[Resolution]

All green peafowl have pale fulvous primaries. Indian peafowl have rich burned orange primaries. This is an important distinction to make. The Tonkin imperator exhibits vermillion tinged primaries that pale fulvous like other green peafowl but decidedly rosey pink. Javanese peafowl also have an unusual primary feather colour- a bit pinkish tinge but tending toward palest mauve- it's a subtle distinction. The Cardamom peafowl has nearly white primaries with a decided yellow tint.

The scaled back of your beautiful green peafowl in flight is a smidgen too short. The back of the green peafowl is still longer than that of the Indian.

The gap of which I'm speaking is not a large gap. It's the space between the wing and the back and reveals the back completely. When the wings are held at their greatest expanse the tertials do not obscure any part of the back.When folded this is not the case but when the bird is flying, the objective is to utilise the greatest surface area of the wing. True, in flapping flight there will be moments when the back is obscured briefly. In your photograph of the Indian peafowl juvenile, the gap between wing and back is evident. You'll have to look a bit more objectively.

In Natural History Illustration - the most surface area of the bird is what will be useful for identification purposes .



Yes. The identification plate of the Siamese imperator is incomplete as I stated in that post. The wing map has not been completed.
Good eyes.

I commend you for your analytical treatise on the Black Shoulder peafowl, however, we never speak in absolutes in science. I hope that my long opus posts are not encouraging you to become subjective in your focus. My research is incomplete and probably will be the rest of my life. There will never be absolute knowledge of the biology or evolutionary history of the Peafowl.
However, your theory regarding the island of India populated by Black Shoulder peafowl is incorrect. We know this from molecular work. Indeed, I've been working on a manuscript on peafowl where we go into great length on the molecular biology of 11 forms of Green Peafowl and two forms of Indian Peafowl with some discussion of the molecular biology of Black Shoulder peafowl specimens preserved in natural history museums from the last three centuries- that is- the genetics of Black Shoulders before hobbyists began mucking about with them, crossing them into green peafowl and back again and before the generation of these domestic peafowl mutations.

Re: India:

Most of this region rests on a distinct tectonic plate, the Indian Plate (the northerly portion of the Indo-Australian Plate), and is isolated from the rest of Asia by mountain barriers.[24][25] A component of Pangaea some 250 million years ago, the subcontinent split from Gondwana during the Cretaceous period some 90 million years ago, and then drifted north before colliding with the Eurasian Plate about 50-55 million years ago and giving birth to the Himalayan range and the Tibetan plateau. The subcontinent continues to move northeastward some 5 cm annually, pushing the Himalayas up higher.

Please read this paper and think about your maths:

Evolution of Peafowl 1

Evolution of Peafowl 2

Evolution of Peafowl 3

Peafowl Evolution 4
The peafowl described in this paper appears to be synonymous with Pavo antiqus , the giant peafowl native to Deqin (Shangrila) China.

Pavo antiqus is ~ 15% larger than spicifer arakensis the second largest of the South East Asian peafowl. It appears to be very similar to a fossil form known from East Africa and Southern Europe.

Western Yunnan

Evolution of Gallinaceous Birds

This last paper was written in part and largely researched by Dr. Gareth Dyke. He is co-author (with myself) of the Encyclopedia Gallomorphae and of course this includes each of the distinct monographs that comprise this series. The first manuscript will be published in 2013 by Hancock House Publishing. This covers the monophyletic family Gallusinidae, the Francolins, Bamboo Partridges, Junglefowl, Alectoris rock partridges, Snow Cocks, true quails, jungle bush quail,sand partridges and domestic fowl.
The second manuscript covers the Pavoninidae -the peafowl family.
The third covers Polyplectronidae and on down the line...​

 

[FrankYLegend]

Quote:
Great to see you revised it, though Imperator doesn't have a mound on its crest. The crown should be green not blue. The annamensis sketch is pretty much spot on though.

A wild caught annamensis from Vietnam:

Note the crest mound and crest shape. The iris and bill are really pale too. The same keeper also has nominate imperator.

People often say "muticus muticus" are the most beautiful birds with brightest plumage but I don't think that is always the case. Imperator is quite comparable with one of the Isthmus of Kra subspecies of Malaysian muticus.

Imperator male without train:

Muticus Kra hen:

The crests are quite different and the Malaysian bird has more barring on the back. I've had people say the latter bird is a hybrid but it's just the way that the bird is curled up so you can't see the backplate. Unfortunately the male kept at this aviary is a spicifer.

 

[Resolution]

Please post photos of the spicifer male. This individual is not female. It may be the trainless morph that one comes across fairly often in wild green peafowl populations. William Beebe describes them in the Monograph of the Pheasants. They will never develop a train. Some people go so far as to claim they are another species altogether. I think it's just a morph.
This annamensis is astonishing. Do you have more photos to share of it?

 

[Resolution]

I'm just blown away by Clifton's work. I'm scared to ask him how old he is because I have feeling that like you Franky he's super young, an aspy and so much better at what he does than I could possibly be even now as an old man.

The only real flaw I see with Clifton's wing illustrations is in the scapulars.

And this is going to be critical as we will soon be discussing the "wing map". The best possible determination of race and species amongst the Green Peafowls are distinctive coverts- the median, marginal and so on. Each form has its own shape - the individual feathers themselves may half dollar shaped or slightly triangulated - squarish and so on.

Congo Peafowl can serve as your reference for the wing maps of other peafowl

one of the southern races of spicifer

Arakan peafowl

Sri Lanka Peafowl

the wing map

I had all confidence that I could spot a hybrid, no matter what the percentage of green blood until I saw a photo of one of Sid's birds at the Texas Peafowl site.
That's just frightening. I would never has guessed that that bird is hybrid. I'm going to study the wing map and see if any cristatus traits are at all evident there as this region is the least pliable in crossing different species together.

 

[FrankYLegend]

Martin got the Vietnam photos from a keeper in Vietnam.

http://spicifere.pagesperso-orange.fr/paons_du_vietnam.html

The imperator is a male right? It has the "diamond" on its shoulder, I overlooked that, no wonder there's no barring. The bottom photo you already posted a long time ago. I thought the Jurong park bird was a female.

There are nominate imperators at Ueno Zoo, 2 males and one epistatic female (which you said could be due to Agent Orange). One male did not have a train.

Ueno probably got more Peafowl??? There's a glass enclosure with two "trained" males some of these photographs instead of a cage.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Ueno Peacock

Both Martin and Fritz thought the Jurong hen was a hybrid. Fritz also suggested the old photograph you have of a Kra hen was just an imperator.

You have posted some pictures of that male spicifer already.

http://i.pbase.com/o2/33/205833/1/22028072.rYRSsgcs.PeacockGreen.jpg

Here are two, never-before-released photographs (taken in 2007 by me) of a bird at Ueno:

And a Green Peacock skin shown in National Geographic a few months ago:

 

[MinxFox]

I agree, that annamensis is beautiful! The face is so striking. It looks so warrior-like yet so colorful. Franky I love those links, the pictures are amazing!

Some of my favorite green peafowl photographs are from this:
http://www.thailand-fotos.page.tl/Galerie/pic-1001347.htm
But the site isn't working right now.

Here is one of the photos:
forum.de/data/o/70/351619/image::Christoph_Keller_pavo_muticus_pfau_gruener_green_peafowl_aehrentraegerpfau.jpg

I love that set of photos, in it it shows them wadding through water, displaying (peahen and peacock). I think they said these where Indo-Chinese...Whatever they are I love the golden color they have.

Edit:
Yes I saw that green peafowl in National Geographic, my mom and I were wondering if its face really would be that bright solid blue and yellow or if they painted it because the color was fading?

 

[FrankYLegend]

yes I saw that link before. Even the picture link doesn't work now

It's amazing because before that I always thought of Imperator Siamensis as a greenish bird but it's amazing to see them golden like that. I also love that picture of the peafowl with the lizards.