Peafowl are two Asiatic and one African species of flying bird in the genus Pavo of the pheasant family, Phasianidae, best known for the male's extravagant eye-spotted tail covert feathers, which it displays as part of courtship. The male is called a peacock, the female a peahen, and the offspring pea chicks. The adult female peafowl is grey and/or brown. Peachicks can be between yellow and a tawny colour with darker brown patches or light tan and ivory, also referred to as "dirty white". The term also embraces the Congo Peafowl, which is placed in a separate genus Afropavo.
The species are:
Indian Peafowl, Pavo cristatus, a resident breeder in South Asia. The peacock is designated as the national bird of India.
Green Peafowl, Pavo muticus. Breeds from Burma east to Java. The IUCN lists the Green Peafowl as endangered due to hunting and a reduction in extent and quality of habitat. It is a national symbol in the history of Burma.
Congo Peafowl Afropavo congensis.
The name for a group of peafowl is a pride or an ostentation.
As with many birds, vibrant iridescent plumage colours are not primarily pigments, but structural colouration. Optical interference Bragg reflections, based on regular, periodic nanostructures of the barbules (fiber-like components) of the feathers produce the peacock's colors. Slight changes to the spacing result in different colours. Brown feathers are a mixture of red and blue: one colour is created by the periodic structure, and the other is a created by a Fabry--Pérot interference peak from reflections from the outer and inner boundaries. Such structural colouration causes the iridescence of the peacock's hues since, unlike pigments, interference effects depend on light angle.
Colour mutations exist through selective breeding, such as the leucistic White Peafowl and the Black-Shouldered Peafowl.
Peafowl are omnivorous and eat most plant parts, flower petals, seed heads, insects and other arthropods, reptiles, and amphibians. In common with other members of the Galliformes, males possess metatarsal spurs or "thorns" used primarily during intraspecific fights.
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