THE FERAL PEAFOWL OF NOTTINGHAM FOREST 
Jay Lee shoots game in Houston’s wild west: “Off Memorial Drive between Kirkwood and Dairy Ashford reside the wild peafowl of West Houston. Peacocks and Peahens roam the yards and streets, putting on a show and making a racket. Their call sounds like a baby crying out or a cat in severe pain. Some residents describe their call as “sounds like somebody being murdered.â€
Overall they seem oblivious to the human residents and the occasional gawkers like myself who drive down to see them.
Apparently the population of about 50 birds are offspring from a pair that a landowner gave his wife more than 30 years ago.” [Bald Heretic]
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Ha! I grew up in a neighborhood right next to Nottingham Forest and have seen and heard these birds many times. Sometimes when you walk the bayou trail behind the neighborhood you can hear them or catch a glimpse. I have a picture somewhere of a peacock on the roof of my parents’ garage following a particularly windy storm – I imagine it was blown there. It definitely confounded our cat that day.
I live in Memorial Bend, which is at Beltway 8, and we have had some of the birds visit our neighborhood. They were 5 or 6 of them and they only stayed a day or two.
When my family first moved to Nottingham Forest in 1964 or 65, the neighborhood just east of us had flocks of guinea hens. Every morning on my way to school (Memorial Jr. High) I would see another one dead on Memorial Drive (just two lanes then).
This went on until I went to college. Now I have a home in Montrose and one on Padre Island where our neighbors have Peacocks and Guineas.
Oh, and we lived in NF so long ago, that we had an owl nest over our driveway and the mother owl would regurgitate food for her chicks, sometimes miss and hit my Mom’s Jag. Really made her mad.
There is a gun range close to 288 and Beltway 8 that has about 10 Peafowls (just found out only the male is actually called a Peacock) running wild. It’s crazy to be shooting your gun and right next to you is a curious bird that is completely unphased by the banging of the pistol. Very beautiful, LARGE birds that are used to being around people and guns! Very strange!
Years ago there was a flock of guineafowl that roamed lower Westheimer. One morning I was driving to work and about a dozen of the birds were trotting purposefully down the sidewalk, heading west toward Ruggles.
I used to live at 6830 Spring-Cypress Rd., in far north Harris County,just east east of Steubner-Airline Rd.on the Klein family property. They had peafowl roosting in the huge old oak and pecan trees. Those birds were the best “watch dogs ” ,ever. Then I moved into town,near Rosedale and Austin.And a peacock “adopted” that house.And stayed. I used to live near Rivercrest (Westheime / Gessner area. And there were peacocks.And now living out in West Memorial, there are peacocks !!!! There IS a theme with the birds…
I live on Rivercrest and someone 50 years ago bought the peacocks and raised them here. When he left he left them. We love them and welcome them. They are beautiful and the kida love them. We feed them black oil sunflower seeds and they actually come and wait for them.