COIMBATORE: The Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), which was engaged by the forest department in September 2022 to study the population and behaviour of peafowl and suggest steps to prevent them from raiding crops, has come up with a few measures to keep the birds at bay.
Following repeated complaints from farmers about peafowl damaging crops, the forest department approached SACON, which constituted a four-member team led by HN Kumara, principal scientist, S Babu, senior scientist, along with the research biologists Aravind and Kishore. The state government has allotted Rs 17 lakh for the project.
The team has been conducting extensive field visits and interacting with farmers at specific places in every district. The team also conducted peafowl census and assessed the extent of crop damage caused by the birds.
According to sources, the team found out that peafowl damage crops like chilli, tomato and maize in western parts of TN, paddy in Thanjavur and black gram in southern TN.
“The objective is to assess how farmers are affected by the intrusion of peafowl. After interacting with the farmers, we came to know that the population of the birds increased by many fold in the last ten years and we are in final stage of compiling the behavioural pattern of the peafowl. While some farmers say peafowl are attracted towards tomato, paddy, maize and other crops, others said the birds caused minimum damage to their crops. This was found in our study conducted at Dharapuram in Tiruppur district,” S Babu told TNIE.
The year-long study will be completed in the next four months and the team will give suggestions to the forest department to prevent the peafowl from damaging crops. The forest department will likely use reflective tapes and decoys to chase away the birds and the team is using the devices on a trial basis. A decoy of stray dog or jackal would be placed in the agriculture field as the peafowls are scared of these, sources said.