Visiting those street birds again.

Posted on August 19, 2023 by dinajohnston

I was running errands nearby the neighborhood that has the peacocks roaming around so I stopped by to see if there were any more babies. I found 2 different Moms with little ones. One baby was a little bigger than the other.

This Mom had 7 babies and they were just cruising down the street.

There were lots of males hanging out.

This one looks like a juvenile male. His pretty feathers aren’t quite grown in yet but he was already strutting around.

I got a quick sighting of the white peacock but I still haven’t seen him spread his feathers out yet. Maybe he hasn’t seen a lady that he wants to flirt with yet (or I’m just not catching it).

Right before leaving I saw the white female and she had a little baby. The baby was sticking close to Mom and I only got a quick shot before they headed for the back of a house.

Annoyingly beautiful birds

Posted on July 1, 2023 by dinajohnston

There’s a few neighborhoods in the Tampa Bay area that have free roaming wild peacocks. One of the most populated areas is a large neighborhood in Clearwater. The urban legend states the peacocks are descendants of the original Seville Peacock Farm that was located in the same area a long time ago. The farm grew Seville oranges back in the late 1890’s and started raising peacocks in the 1930’s. The farm became a tourist attraction until it was closed in the late 60’s. Many of the peacocks were let loose or “escaped” when the farm closed. Of course I had to go find these beautiful birds.

I heard there was an all white peacock roaming the neighborhood and I was able to find it pretty quickly although I never did see him with his feathers out on display (it was mating season but he was not flirting with the ladies the afternoon I was there). White peacocks are not albinos. They actually have a genetic mutation that is known as Leucism, which causes the lack of pigments in the plumage. He was a beautiful bird and it was fitting that he was sitting on a white truck for me (although I’m sure the truck owner doesn’t like having peacock poo on his truck).

After driving through the neighborhood I found a female white one as well a few streets away.

A few weeks later I was running errands close by and stopped in the neighborhood again and realized there were baby peacocks everywhere. Several Moms only had 1 or 2 babies but one Mom had 6, adding more to the population. There aren’t just a few of them here but tons. I counted 42 peacocks on just 3 streets. It’s interesting that they stay in this one area but there may be more that has migrated farther away. I’m sure they are being fed by many of the homeowners. And they are so loud. I could hear them calling all over.

I’ve stopped by the area many times hoping to get a shot of the white peacock with his feathers spread out so I have a lot more pictures coming.

You can read more about the peacock farm here.

The “Show off” birds

Posted on August 29, 2020 by dinajohnston

There’s a lot of peacocks out roaming around Horsepower for Kids animal sanctuary.

These young ladies were having a dirt bath out in the cow pasture. I use the term bath loosely since they are rolling around in years of dried cow poop dirt. They do this to keep the bugs off.

There were several young males showing off near the ladies but I think they are all siblings. The young males don’t have the longer feathers like the grown up males do yet.

After their dirt bath, the young females wandered over to the chicken coup. I think they were trying to find a way to get in so they can get the feed.

Later I saw some lady peacocks hanging around the tortoise pens. They were also looking for food sitting around. They had babies with them and the babies couldn’t figure out how to get in the pens.

One of the babies made it over the fence but the others kept running along the boards like “Where’s Mom going?” Eventually the babies figured out if they went around to the back Mom was meeting them back there. They were looking at me like “Lady help us over”. It was tempting but I wanted to see what they would do. After they met back up with Mom they headed to the bushes behind the pens for a nap.

A fun morning at the petting zoo.

Posted on August 10, 2020 by dinajohnston

The last time I was at Horsepower for Kids petting zoo/animal sanctuary was in early March. At the end of May I stopped by right after they had re-opened up. I figured this was a good place to get out and stretch my legs and it wouldn’t be crowded. Everything is pretty spread out and there were only a few other people there first thing in the morning. These above juvenile geese were growing up in the safety of a pen with a small pond before being released in the big lake. I realized that they were just eggs when I was there in March and now they were almost grown up. It would have been fun to see them as tiny fluff balls but at least they were growing up to be handsome loud annoying big geese.

The best was seeing the baby peacocks although they were pretty shy and stayed under the bushes. I”m sure the neighbors close by wouldn’t think more peacocks were the best though. So cute!