As many as seven peacocks were found dead in a field at Byraganahalli village of Sidlaghatta in Chikkaballapur taluk of Karnataka. According to initial examinations by veterinarians and forest officials, the peacocks died due to poisoning. The incident occurred on Thursday; investigation is underway to find out how they were poisoned.
Sidlaghatta is home to a healthy population of peacocks, who often forage in and around fields in villages in the region. On Thursday, March 10, villagers came across the carcasses of seven peacocks at a field and informed forest officials. Forest personnel Jayachandra, Govindaraju and others inspected the spot before veterinarians Prashanth and Munikrishna conducted necropsy on the peacock carcasses. The carcasses were found near the Tirumala Hillock on the outskirts of Sidlaghatta town, and were all within a radius of 100 meters.
Sidlaghatta Range Forest Officer Divya said, “As per preliminary examinations on the carcasses, the veterinarians have suspected the deaths to be due to poisoning. The samples of the dead peacocks have been sent for lab tests in Hebbal, Bengaluru to know the exact cause of the deaths; lab reports will be available only after a couple of days.”
On speculation that peacocks could have been deliberately poisoned by farmers, the RFO said there are no complaints of crop damages caused by peacocks in the region. “Farmers are tolerant towards peacocks,” Divya said she has observed in Sidlaghatta.
She however suspected that farmers in Sidlaghatta have made it a practice to mix pesticides to water in farm ponds at fields, and often peacocks stray into fields to quench their thirst; these peacocks might have consumed the pesticide mixed water in a farm pond, she speculated. Further she also said that farmers sometimes keep poison laced foods around to kill rodents to save their crops from attacks, and these peacocks might have eaten the food laced with rat poison and died.
“We were to initiate steps in the region to create awareness among farmers not to mix pesticide in water at farm ponds but before we could start such a programme, this incident happened,” she said.
A farmers’ leader of Sidlaghatta, Surendra Gowda told TNM on Saturday that he had appealed to farmers to trap rodents in cages and not to go on administering poison laced foods to kill rodents, which lures peacocks and kills them.
He added that food laced with rat poison could spell disaster for peacocks whose population has been growing in recent years in Sidlaghatta. He however made it clear that farmers of the region do not deliberately poison peacocks.