This story was first published in Oaklandside, an independent, nonprofit news site.
If you find yourself taking a stroll around the Rockridge Trader Joe’s, you may hear a strange cry. It’s a loud, wordless call, which in itself is not uncommon on the streets of Oakland, only this one is different. Eeeeeyahhhh! Follow the sound and you might wind up on Oak Grove Avenue. There you can catch a glimpse of him: tall, proud, with a beautiful plume of green and blue feathers.
His name is Kevin, and he’s known as the neighborhood peacock. And like any handsome newcomer with a mysterious backstory, he is the subject of a great deal of community fascination.
Kevin showed up two years ago on July 4. Or maybe it was a year ago. And maybe his name is not Kevin but Bob. He eats only organic blueberries. Unless he’s down the street and then he eats peanuts. In reality, it’s hard to get the facts straight about him—they vary depending on who you ask—but one thing is for sure: His community loves him. Mostly.
For ease of reading, let’s take a stance on the name. We’ll call him Kevin because that is how he is most widely known (sorry to all the Bob partisans out there). Longtime Rockridge resident Christian Anderson, who owns one of the properties that the bird frequents, remembers the peacock first showing up on July 4, 2022. Soon enough Anderson was calling him Kevin, named for the large bird in the Disney Pixar movie Up.
“Two years ago, he landed here and he’s just been kicking it,” said Anderson. “He’s just been hanging here. I feed him blueberries—he will eat nothing else, basically.”
Kevin can often be found roaming Oak Grove Avenue until the early evening. When the sun sets he makes his way up his favorite tree—the clumsy ascent of which has been a beloved neighborhood spectacle, often requiring two or three attempts. “It’s goofy as hell,” said Anderson. Once in his tree, Kevin settles in for the night.
Kevin isn’t the first peacock to show up in Oakland, and he’s not the first in California to garner attention for taking up a squawking residency in an urban neighborhood. The difference is that usually they’re seen as a nuisance and not a beloved neighborhood icon.
How the peacocks came to California
Originally from Sri Lanka and India, peafowl, the common name that describes the species as a whole, can be found on every continent except Antarctica. For centuries, peacocks have served as a status symbol, bought and shipped around the world, set loose to roam on estates and ranches.
In Southern California, the lineage of feral peafowl is often traced back to a man named Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin. Baldwin was a 19th-century investor who in 1875 purchased the Santa Anita Ranch in Arcadia, California. He imported a significant number of peafowl from India, and to this day they roam the area, which has now become the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden.
Peafowl have become so prominent in the region that they are now the official bird of the city of Arcadia. The town puts out a full pamphlet on what residents and visitors should know about the peafowl roaming the streets.
While strikingly beautiful, peacocks can also be quite a nuisance. Feral urban peacocks have been caught pecking at car windows, destroying property, and announcing themselves at all hours of the day with their telltale call.
Los Angeles has had such a significant peafowl problem over the years that the city implemented local legislation to stop people from feeding the wild birds. The law is an attempt to reduce the flourishing peacock population and keep the birds’ temperaments under control—peacocks who are consistently fed by people have shown a greater propensity for aggression. Residents caught giving their local peacock a snack could face a $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail.
Here in Northern California, a townie peacock likely means that someone’s exotic pet was abandoned or ran away—that’s the theory of some local birders anyway. (The Oakland Zoo has even received a few calls from people wanting to donate their pet peacocks.) Residents across the Bay Area have taken to social media to provide their own explanations for why rogue peacocks occasionally show up in towns. Maybe they ran away from a zoo. Maybe they were the forgotten mascot of some local restaurant that has since shut its doors.
One such peacock, which Anderson believes may actually be Kevin, caused a stir in North Oakland on the app Nextdoor. The peacock took up on Occidental Street, whereupon a noise complaint was filed against him because of the constant squawking. No official action was taken, but the community in which he lived became embroiled in frequent debate over the bird: neighbor pitted against neighbor by what we might call BIMBYism–bird in my backyard.
Kevin’s Rockridge residency, however, has been much smoother.
‘He brings a lot of people a lot of joy’
During the day Kevin wanders around Oak Grove Avenue, lounging in yards and occasionally showing off his tail feathers in a vibrant display. While the neighbors are used to his presence, there is always someone who is surprised to see a peacock on the loose in Oakland. You can’t walk down the street without seeing people of all ages stop and fawn over Kevin.
Anderson said the bird mainly hangs out at his house, where Kevin is fed and given water daily. He believes Kevin came from another Oakland neighborhood. One man in particular, he said, loosely claimed Kevin on social media, saying he had been feeding him regularly when Kevin had lived in a previous neighborhood. But the man did not come to get him when Anderson let him know that Kevin was now on Oak Grove Avenue.
“No one wants to claim him,” Anderson said. “He’s very feral.”
As a result, the Oak Grove Avenue community has taken the bird under its wing, feeding him grains and peanuts when he tires of Anderson’s blueberries. Peafowl are omnivores and can eat most natural foods.
“Everybody loves him to death,” said neighbor, Brian Luffe. “He brings a lot of joy to a lot of people. ”
Not to Luffe, though. He has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years. He is eager for Kevin to “go away.” While he doesn’t mind the bird himself, Luffe said, he doesn’t enjoy the crowd that the peacock brings. He does recognize the happiness that Kevin provides.
“There’s a gentleman that comes here in a walker and just enjoys watching him be a peacock in the neighborhood,” said Luffe. “It makes it hard not to like him, because everybody else really appreciates him a lot and is just so happy he’s here. I’m the curmudgeon.”
On a recent evening, two or three people stopped, Trader Joe’s bag in hand, to watch Kevin make his regular trip to the top of the tree. This is a daily occurrence in the neighborhood whenever the sun dips down to just the right point in the sky. One woman, who said she grew up in the area, watched as the bird scampered awkwardly up the tree and plopped himself heavily on the branches. She speculated aloud that maybe Kevin had always been here. Kevin’s reaction could not be gleaned, but surely he had to have been as proud as, well, a peacock. There’s nothing a neighborhood newcomer likes better than to be taken for a local.
