20 Beautiful Peacock Pictures

By: Nate Kay

With its extravagant eye-spotted tail, the peacock (male peafowl) is a beautiful bird to snap a few pictures of. Interestingly, the vibrant color of peacock feathers is actually the result of how the feathers are microscopically structured. Slight changes in the spacing of the feathers’ fibers also change the feathers’ colors.

In fact, the pigment of peacock feathers is brown, only their nanostructure makes them seem blue, turquoise, and green. This unique coloration is also why peacock feathers look iridescent, since light angles affect structural coloration more than pigments.

Miss Peacock: “Am I beautiful?” by Lomoody

So why take so much trouble to look beautiful? Charles Darwin thought that peacocks provided a great example of sexual selection, but John Steinbeck had a different perspective: “Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

In any case, peacocks are certainly beloved by many photographers.