And a Green Peacock skin shown in National Geographic a few months ago:
The Green Peafowl in National Geographic- I'm familiar with this skin- it's face has been painted and I'm not entirely certain what form it is. It may be one of the imperators.
Franky the photo of the male you thought might be a form of
spicifer - I'm fairly certain it's the Kunming
imperator (?). I heard that Dr. Akishino is collecting up all the forms of Green Peafowl. I'm not confident that the Kunming form is actually an
imperator any longer. I think it may be its own unique evolutionary novelty. Now that I've learned a bit more about Yunnan- it biogeography and the actual terrain - It's not so simple as I once assumed.
Every population of peafowl coming from one of these amazing regions has been on its own for a very long while- possibly since the Pliocene.
Yunnan is possibly a centre of dispersal for all peafowl. I can't wait for more molecular work to be completed and on more populations from different regions of Yunnan. Just looking at their phenotype isn't all that useful as to determining what their real genetic makeup is but it is good to be able to differentiate each regional form from the next.
Kunming Peafowl
Regions of Yunnan
Peafowl of Yunnan:
1. Deqen region
Pavo antiqus
2. Xishuangbanna
Pavo annamensis xishuangbannaensis
3.Wenshan
Pavo imperator imperator
4.Dali, Chuxiong,Kunming
Pavo imperator yunnanensis
5.Dehong, Lincang -possibly a
spicifer race that has historically intergraded with
xishuangbannaensis