A tale of two species: human and peafowl interactions in human dominated landscape influence each other’s behaviour

Abstract Wild life is increasingly coming in contact with humans in many parts of the world. Human perception of wild life may be an important factor in population management and conservation practices in urban and semi-urban areas. Human attitude towards bird species may vary from non-violent coexistence to a perception of birds as pests. Based on the data collected from survey interviews, we studied the perceptions of local communities in Rajasthan, India towards Indian Peafowl. Local communities in Rajasthan reported Indian Peafowl as crop pest and this perception varied across seasons. The crop loss incurred due to Indian Peafowl also varied across seasons according to the respondents. Despite reporting peafowls as a crop pest, locals regularly offered grains for them as a traditional practice. Thus, at our study sites locals have mostly positive perception about Indian peafowl around them. Food provisioning by local human population influenced diet composition and time-budget of Indian Peafowls at food provision and non-provision sites. Sites at which food provisioning was less or absent, peafowl spent more time in walking in search of food and more than half of their diet consisted of natural food. In contrast, the sites at which plenty of grains were available, time spent in walking was significantly less, while time spent in feeding was significantly more; and over 70% of their diet consisted of carbohydrate and protein-rich provisioned grains. Food provisioning changed the benefit: cost ratio (measured as time spent in feeding to time spent in all other behaviours) between provision and non-provision sites. Thus, food provisioning by humans can change feeding ecology of native Indian peafowl populations, while the presence of peafowl in human dominated landscape changes how humans interact with wild life around them.