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Peacocks ruffle feathers in Seminole neighborhood
By JANEL STEPHENS SEMINOLE -- Christine Bachor stands on her front porch and listens to birds chirping and twittering in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. Suddenly, there comes a mighty squawk. "That's it," Bachor says, and points in the direction of the sound. "That's a peacock." The certified equine appraiser likens the sound to children screaming. Her neighbors, Richard and Marge Hamilton, say the peafowl sounds more like a woman crying "Heee-elp." "How would you like to wake up to that at nighttime?" said Richard Hamilton, a retired crime scene technician for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. Hamilton complained to the city manager to get the peafowls removed. The city contacted Pinellas County Animal Services and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. But for now, the peafowls are here to stay. "We don't do fowl. We're just not staffed to do it," said Dr. Kenny Mitchell, director of Pinellas County Animal Services. "In terms of public safety, we haven't had any problems with peacocks." Wildlife commission officials said peafowls are considered domestic livestock, and therefore are not regulated or protected by the commission. Code enforcement officer John Marcum said there may be five peafowls -- four males and one female -- wandering around Seminole City Park. They've been seen among oak trees in the back yards on Old Oakhurst Road and 72nd and 74th terraces. The Indian peafowl is the best-known species of the colorful bird. The male bird has a metallic blue-green neck with bold spots on its feathers. The female bird, called a peahen, can lay 10 or more eggs. Both birds are the size of a large turkey. The peafowls subsist on small animals, insects and vegetation and have few predators. They live up to 20 years and longer. Other cities have had problems with the birds with the remarkable plumage. Peafowls have divided neighborhoods in Clearwater, where their population has multiplied to more than 100. They've become a fixture at the Dunedin Historical Cemetery. Residents of Rancho Palos Verdes, which at one count had more than 150 peafowls roaming the streets, hired Francine Bradley, a poultry specialist with the University of California at Davis, to help them remove some 50 peafowls and place them on farms and with host families. "It would be so bad that on a public road you would have to stop your car to let a whole muster of peafowl cross the road," Bradley said. Bradley suggests that if there is a problem with the peafowls, it must be addressed soon. "It's not going to get better if left alone," Bradley said. "The easiest time and the least expensive time is when the numbers are still small." Officials say this is the first time anyone has complained about the peafowls in the several years they have roosted around Old Oakhurst Road. "They've been around there for as long as I can remember," said former Seminole Mayor Holland Mangum. There was a pair of peafowls that came with the Seminole City Park property when the city purchased it in 1975, Mangum said. "We named the male Emal," Mangum said. Then the peafowls started getting into gardens. At Mangum's suggestion, the city built an aviary in the city park and kept about six or seven peafowls at a time. "Most of them were females," Mangum recalls. "You couldn't keep two males together. Old Emal got beat up so bad we had to take him out." The aviary was closed in the mid 1980s, but Mangum said he believes the peafowls roaming the streets are descendants of the ones that the city kept. Times researchers Kitty Bennett and John Martin contributed to this report.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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From the Times South Pinellas desks | ||||||||||||||||||
