The peafowl has no business being in New Zealand but it is here anyway. Native to India and Sri Lanka it arrived as an ornamental bird. Some escaped. Some were released. Now small populations live wild in the North Island. They are loud. They are colourful. They are out of place. The male is the peacock. He is impossible to ignore. The body is iridescent blue-green. The tail is a train of feathers each one tipped with an eye. He fans the train. He shakes it. He rattles it. The females watch. They choose. The female is the peahen. She is brown and grey. She is camouflaged. She does not have a train. She does not need one. Peafowl feed on seeds insects fruit and small animals. They scratch at the ground like chickens. They eat almost anything. Garden vegetables and pet food are also taken when available. The call is a loud piercing 'mee-oww' often repeated. A peacock calling at dawn sounds like a cat in distress. It carries for kilometres. The neighbours complain. In New Zealand wild peafowl are found in small pockets. The Hawke's Bay. The Wairarapa. Northland. A few birds here and there. They do not form large populations. Breeding happens in spring. The nest is a scrape on the ground hidden under a bush. Four to six eggs are laid. The female incubates alone. The chicks are fluffy and follow the mother. They stay close. Safety lies in numbers. Peafowl can fly. They roost in trees at night. They fly up to escape predators. They fly down to feed. The peacock's train is not the tail. The tail is underneath. The train is made of elongated upper tail coverts. The bird has been lying about its anatomy for thousands of years. It is a deception that works. The peafowl has been a symbol of beauty and vanity for millennia. It does not know this. It just wants to mate. In New Zealand these birds are a curiosity. They are not a threat. They are just there. A splash of colour in the green countryside. No significant threats exist due to the small population size. Predation of eggs and chicks by introduced mammals occurs. Road mortality also takes a toll. The global population is secure in its native range. Here it persists in semi-feral states. Most birds are descended from escaped ornamental stock. They adapt to farmland parks and gardens. They prefer areas with trees for roosting and open ground for feeding. They are often found near human habitation. The numbers are low. The visibility is high. It carries on.