We are heading toward our vacation destination deep into the mountains and at one of the petrol stations we encountered the strangest thing: a peacock bullying a turkey. Or so it seemed. I tried to convince myself that the peacock was eating the lice or something along this line from the turkey’s head. But it did not look like it. Given that the turkey looked very sad and lethargic, I think the bully hypothesis is valid.
Even though this bullying happened, the peacock is incredibly beautiful. Its purple feathers shone beautifully in the little sunlight that was present. Its deep black eyes sucked us into its lifeworld.
But the poor turkey did not look happy at all. It looked really depressed, as if the weight of the situation rested on his should weighing it down. The close-up did not help with this fact…
Standing on the sideline, we could not do much. It did not look like the poor turkey liked this fact, the pecking looked very hard. I did not see blood, luckily not, but it did not look like a pleasant experience in any sense of the word.
From a distance, we could only watch. I capture one such moment, in which the peacock pecked at the poor turkey. It really looked hurtful, and I could really not understand the situation. My girlfriend tried to chase it away, but this did not work. And even though she might have succeeded, they live in the same pen so the situation would have only continued.
I really hope that the situation was symbiotic, and that the pecking did not hurt the poor turkey…
I have a short video of the incident as well.
In any case, I hope that you are well and that you will not have a similar situation than the poor turkey.
Happy birding, and keep well.
All of the photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron 300mm zoom lens. The video was taken with my iPhone. The writings are also my own.