Peacock struts his stuff and finally appeals to one of the ladies!

Mike’s next door neighbours have a peacock and thus far he has shown no interest in the peahens, so as he he was out, he had drawn an interested crowd of humans, several toting cameras! But if we thought it was going to be easy to capture shots of the event, or in particular to see him displaying his plumage in a courtship display to one of the peahens, we were in for a shock. He was in no hurry, and there seemed to be several moments when we the assembled shooters thought this is it, but finally he chose to strut around with more purpose and then finally we witnessed the display.

But for several minutes although a new lady had appeared she showed not the slightest interest – in fact she often showed disdain! Then we could see a slight melting of the Ice Queen and she moved closer, then bent here head and continued pecking in the grass, he would move around her and show his fine rear plumage; she would look up momentarily before continuing her interest in the ground. She seemed to tease occasionally by turning in his direction, sometimes moving a step nearer before resuming her lack of interest. He never closed his wings, he would occasionally do a shake as if to say: “Hey, look here lady it’s hard work keeping all these feathers up.”

You could not fault him for persistence; he was undeterred by her lack of interest, he seemed sure she would succumb to his charms, and slowly the interest she showed became greater than the spells of of disinterest, and she began to follow him, occasionally taking a look at rear, then she returned to face him and she gave a shudder as she plumped up her own feathers and this seemed to say: “OK, Big Boy, you’ve pulled!” and she demurely walked across his front as if saying: “Come along, follow me”.

The two pages of images give a clue as to the unfolding of the event – this was far from a private moment in this young beau’s life!