HIVERNON A (1932) Some office notes made on the Javanese peacock. LIMOSA 5 (2): 66-77.

There exist two distinct species of peafowl, viz. Pavo cristatus Linn. and P. muticus Linn., the first occurring in India and Ceylon, the second in Java. A third variety, P. nigripennis Sclat., dwelling in Assam, Further India and the Malay Peninsula, is to the opinion of the German Professor Dr. Otto ZUR STRASSEN but a subspecies of the first namedspecies. The principal conspicuous difference between the cocks of the two species is to be found in the tuft on the head, which with cristatus (= the crested) exists of feathers, only bearded at the top, whereas that of muticus has a vane along the whole quill, be it only one-sided. Next there are some variances in the colouring of the throat and the wing coverts. A very remarkable difference between the two species however lays in the fact, that the hens of cristatus are dull-coloured and those of muticus on the other hand have partly metallic-glossy plumes, though in a far less degree than the cocks. According to the theory, that if in a species the female birds are dull-coloured in contrast to their brighter mates, this is due to an evolutionnary process, tending to make the first less perceptible when laying on their nests, that species of a genus, whereof the females are the less conspicuous must be the most advanced or phylogenetically the youngest. When this is true the Javanese peafowl must be the most ancient of the two species according to the Darwinian doctrine on the origin of species. This verily would afford an unexpected controversy to the common conception about the primitiveness of the insular Java-fauna. In respect to the specific names there is also somewhat paradoxical. MufJicus is a synonym of mutilus, i.e. mutilated or lopped. Now, when it is supposed that LINNA);:US in assigning names to both species, found the tuft the most characteristic feature (and as the denomination cristatus proves, this at least was the case with one of the two) then immediately the question arises, why he called the Javanese bird the lopped, since this has a complete crest, that of the continental peacock rather being the mutilated one, for part of the vanes of its composing feathers seeming to be clipped. Is it entirely excluded - one may ask that the Swedish naturalist himself named the species just the reverse as they are at present, but his successors by mistake changed the two? Habitat and manner of life are with both species much the same. They require jungles, where patches, thickly overgrown by tall grasses and shrubs are variegated by woods or at least groves with some very tall trees in them. They also never remove at great distances from water, so that in the dry season they are only to be found in the strips of land of but a few miles breadth, bordering the rivers. Throughout the daytime the cock with his harem of ladies wanders about in the undergrowth and the high grasses, but in the morning and the late afternoon the former flies at the top of a very tall tree, where he can overlook a vast extent of country and there soon starts his song. Though not at all rare, peafowl in Java never do flock together in such great numbers as in India, according to some authors about that country; neither in the named island they live about temples etc. in semi-domesticated condition. On the contrary they are always extremely shy and suspicious. In Java however they are nowhere object of superstitious devotion as with some Hindoo-sects. The Javanese peafowl have two distinct sounds. One of these, may-be only produced by the hens, is alike the cackling of guinea fowl (Numida Linn.), but without the nasal twang the latter let us hear. The above alluded to morning- and evening-song of the cock however is a piercing cry, which differs acording to the species. Here again there is occasion for speculation. Dr. W. T. HORNADAY in his book Two years in the jungle, describes the call of P. cristatus as a trisyllable, ringing like pee-goo-wee. However that of P. muticus sounds as pa-on (dissyllabic), much the same as the French term for pea fowl. In Italian and Spanish, both Romanic languages, the word is resp. pavone and pavon and even in the vernaculars of Germanic extraction, like Dutch and modern German, we can retrieve the same root in the words pauw and Piau. The origin of all these terms is to be retraced to the ancient Latin pavo, which certainly is classic, as OVID and PLINY already made use of this word. It must be remembered also, that in Latin there was no distinction between the characters u and V, which in that language must have been a liquid, pronounced much the same like the English w. Evidently all these words are onomatopoeias of the above designed cry of P. muticus. But there is the riddle. Nowadays the well-known peafowl kept in domesticated state about parks of manorhouses etc. is P. cristatus and it is accepted, that from times immemorial t his species was in Europe the prevalent, one may even say the vulgar one. Nevertheless its cry, if Dr. HORNADAY'S version of it is true - which can hardly be doubted of - shows none resemblance to pavo and its derivations in modern languages, as the call of P. muticus does. May we conclude from this, that it was the latter species, which was firs t I y known in ancient Occident, but afterwards superse.ded by the other? But then it must be admitted, that the connections between Europe and Java must be of very old date. Truly these connections need not to have been direct. It may be that only by frequent transfer from hand to hand the Javanese peafowl arrived in the Mediterranean regions in very remote times, when perhaps their Indian congeners were forbidden from exportation, being holy birds. This however remains to historians to elucidate. The mating and hatching season of the Javanese peafowl is not exactly known, but judging from the moulting-time, which commences about medio of August, the first period must have its beginning in the second half of February. When about to lay their eggs, the hens separate from the cocks and from each other and retire in very secret refuges in the dense undergrowth of the forests.

[free pdf] [dutch summary]