Urban Wildlife: Priest Point Peacock

Art by Corvi Zeman

By Juli Mallett

The Priest Point Peacock, a gorgeous India Blue, is so-named as he is often found lurking on the outskirts of that point, that park, and in the driveways and sidewalks that spew forth from the waterfront houses just south of there.
In my first encounter with him, he was standing at the edge of someone’s driveway, shrieking at some worker up a utility pole. Heading into town, I remember that as the trees gave way to people’s homes I thought I heard a child shrieking — and it is not unusual, I am told, to think that the cry of a peacock is the scream of a person.
A hundred yards later, I saw him standing there and looking beautiful and, in his mind at least, fierce.
I decided to be late for an upcoming appointment and circle back around to grab a picture of this most unusual of urban birds. Now he had retreated down the driveway a bit, and was standing tall and proud on a decorative log and making rather less noise.  

Jaded or oblivious Olympians cycled and walked past without acknowledging the peafowl in their midst.  As I photographed him, he eventually slunk down the driveway and around back of the home where I assumed he must live.
I’ve seen him other times since, and his behavior has been no less outlandish, his demeanor no less regal and self-assured.  I eventually realized that he didn’t, in fact, live there, and that he wandered a considerable area.  I had lived in Olympia for years without seeing him, until I moved to North Olympia and made a routine of driving that little stretch along and through the park.
As I asked around, I found that while some folks in the area knew the peacock in question, others completely failed to believe it.  Some who bicycle or walk out that way routinely have never seen him, others have heard only rumors.  And rumors there are.  

The story among those who ought to know is that there used to be a farmer just outside of Olympia’s city limits who kept and bred peafowl of all kinds.  Not just the familiar India Blues, but Pied and other varieties.  One way or another some of them got loose and went feral, and there used to be the shrieks of peafowl throughout the woods north of 26th Ave NE.  The population has waxed and waned over the years, although is mostly waning now, and the Priest Point Peacock isn’t spotted all that often.
Peafowl are, despite their frivolous appearance and haughty personalities, industrious birds. They have a taste for wet dog food, and probably many a raccoon has been blamed for the Purina-thieving work of peacock or peahen.  Aside from that, they like seeds and grain, same as our other regional scavengers, although they certainly can’t fly and climb into fenced backyards as easily as most.  Properly cared-for, they live for decades.
In some beliefs, peacocks are incarnations of or portents of the devil, while some mystical Christian traditions connect them with immortality, Easter and the Eucharist.  The folk and religious presence of peafowl looms large from India through to the Near East.
Above all, they are clever (even mischievous), beautiful and not a little loud.  However some got loose in Olympia, we are lucky to be enriched by their presence, both for their mythical resonance and their imminent charm.  

And next time you hear a piercing cry through the woods of Priest Point, it may not be drunken revelers, but a peacock watching you with its thousand eyes from a tree branch just overhead.  Keep your eyes and ears open, and enjoy the show.

New Feature!

This article is the first of a new occasional series in OP&L: Urban Wildlife. The animals around Olympia are as weird and awesome as the people, and we’re going to profile some of them for you. Let us know if you enjoy it.