11.11.09

my cousin of the week #25... the not so challenging challenge

well i got a lot of correct guesses in my ornithological challenge this weekend!


to everyone who guessed these "mystery" chicks were galliformes you were indeed correct. however more to the point if you guess they were peafowl, aka, peachicks, aka peacocks, and/or aka peahen you were absolutely right!

so congrats to both Albertonykus and Danonychus on this challenge!


here are the little guys with their mommy, a full grown indian peahen or a Pavo cristatus.


when i saw the chicks (which at times was hard, due to their great camouflage!) i was floored! i would not have pictured peacocks having this exact colouration when they were newly hatched...
not that i thought they should have the crazy bright adult colours either. you can't grow up to full size if your flamboyant your whole life. predators would like that just a little bit too much!

no i was confused and surprised by the chicks colour as i know what a teen peafowl's colours were. these right here. i would have thought they'd have had these colours since hatching. obviously i was wrong.

much like the assiniboine park zoo in winnipeg mentioned by Danonychus, the calgary zoo has many peafowl that are allowed to simply wander around the grounds.
i find it interesting that all the peahens i saw had chicks of varying sizes and ages with them (as all these photos are from my trip to zoo today). i would have thought they'd all breed at about the same time and have similar aged offspring. obviously not the case.

5 comments:

Albertonykus said...

A lot of the time baby down just has to be a different color from flight feathers! XD

Yet, their stubby downy baby wings can still help them run up tree trunks! Amazing, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Wow! I never would have guessed Peacock chicks! I just learned something today! Thanks, Traum for teaching that to me! :)

Albertonykus- Conratulations, man! :)

masterymistery said...

aren't the size differences explainable by the fact that some chicks are from the current breeding season and others from the previous breeding season, and others from the breeding season before the previous breeding season?

masterymistery at cosmic rapture

Albertonykus said...

Thanks, Raptor Lewis. Actually, the only thing I could figure out using personal knowledge was that they were galliforms! It took a Google image search to find out more.

Masterymistery - I think you're right. Peafowl don't mature until they're two years old. (Which is still a phenomenal growth rate, mind you, typical of modern birds.)

Dinorider d'Andoandor said...

they are really cute, so when does the male gain his bright colors?