Dozens of feral peacocks still at large
The visitor sat nonchalantly on the roof, unconcerned about the small crowd below marvelling that peacocks, or peahens, are not usually spotted perched on the peaks of homes in Metro Vancouver neighbourhoods.
“It’s the same thing all up and down the block,” Kiran Shergill said of the bird comfortably nestled on the cedar shakes above in Surrey’s Sullivan Heights.
“At night it sounds like someone is walking on your roof.”
Down the street, Corey Hanna took a break from some handiwork in his garage to say how cool it was to have the colourful birds wandering around like they owned the place, and how neat it was to have such a unique feature in the neighbourhood. But they are loud.
“It’s like you’re in Jurassic Park,” he said. “Honest to God, it’s like having pterodactyls outside your window.”
It’s coming up on a year since the City of Surrey began trapping problem peacocks, giving them a health check and then putting them up for adoption.
“But it feels a lot longer than that,” said Kim Marosevich, Surrey’s manager of bylaw services and acting manager of public safety operations.
“This peafowl situation has been ongoing for (some) time.”
The big birds have been around the city’s Sullivan Heights area for perhaps 40 years or more.
Local legend has it a farmer left them behind, or couldn’t catch them, given how wily the birds are, and they went feral.
They didn’t bother anyone until development brought folks and their homes to the neighbourhood, about 10 years ago.
It’s estimated that when the catch-and-relocate plan went into effect last November there were 40 to 45 peafowl.
The city hasn’t had a complaint since Aug. 6 and that bird was captured on Aug. 7, so the traps are stored for now. The spring is when the males, particularly, are annoyingly loud and extra aggressive as they woo the peahens and chase off competition.
“March and April, we get complaints at that time of year,” Marosevich said. “They begin attacking reflective surfaces (thinking it’s a rival) like glass doors, cars ... that nuisance behaviour is what triggers people to call.”
A small number of neighbours near 150 Street and 62 Avenue, who were canvassed, were unaware it takes a call to city hall to have a bird captured.
They assumed the city was collecting all the birds and that it was just taking them some time to do so. Upon reflection, they said they had all noticed a reduced number of birds, but hadn’t seen anyone out with nets in quite awhile.
“We haven’t been complaining because we thought the city was getting rid of them one by one,” Hanna said.
“I didn’t realize you needed to call for them to come get them.”
The colourful birds are considered an introduced, not invasive, species.
“When we capture them and give them a health checkout, they’re heavy with parasites,” Marosevich said.
Peafowl have no natural predators in Surrey because they’re too big for cougars or coyotes, although owls and other birds of prey might target their chicks, she said.
There is a $250 fine for feeding them.
Interest in adopting the first 17 peafowl came from across North America, Marosevich added, but shipping across the border would’ve been expensive and tangled in red tape.
Once the birds are cleaned up and medically cleared at the Surrey Animal Resource Centre, they’re sent to their new homes, including the Greater Vancouver Zoo in Aldergrove.
“There is a fairly wide variety of individuals who volunteered to take them,” Marosevich said. “A lot of hobby farmers with the appropriate facilities and experience to deal with game birds.”