Peacock Pie anybody?

We have three peacocks, two males and one female. One male is the off spring of the other (Percy) and the female (Penny). There was a second sibling, but he met an untimely end after getting into an argument with a car and losing.

During open days, the males can be quite sociable – wandering around the picnic area and are big show-offs. Penny is less sociable, and tends to keep away until everybody goes home, but isn’t so wary of staff and volunteers – especially when there is food around.

All three of them love cars and can often be found wandering around the car parks. Penny can spend hours picking insects of bumpers and number plates – the males, on the other hand are not quite so popular in the car park. They love shiny cars, when they see their reflection, they appear to see a rival, and they will often take them on – resulting in scratched paintwork. Usually the marks wipe off, but they can get quite severe. I’ve been targeted myself. You are usually OK if your car is dirty though! On busy days, when there is somebody in the car park, it can be part of the role to constantly chase the peacocks away from the lovely shiny cars – and they can be very stubborn when they want to be. We’ve even tried using water pistols!

Nobody is safe, and there can be days where putting peacock on the menu of the tea room seems like a good idea. Especially if you add in an hour or two of screeching!

When we still had two youngsters, I once had to separate them as they decided to have a very violent looking fight in the middle of the picnic area. They wouldn’t have hurt anybody but it looked pretty vicious. In the end I stood between them as if I was separating a couple of scrapping boys!

But like everybody else at the property, they are characters and we wouldn’t be with out them. (Although if they touch my car again…!)