Peacocks on the loose in Gig Harbor? Here’s what we know about the recent sightings

Louise Anderson expected sparrows and finches when she set up a bird feeder on her patio at the Heron’s Key retirement community in Gig Harbor.

She was not expecting the peacock that visited Monday night at dusk.

“He came right up to our window and was looking in,” Anderson told the Gateway. “I just started snapping pictures and he kind of wandered around our little cul-de-sac area for a while.”

In the three years she and her husband have been living in Gig Harbor, this was their first peacock sighting.

When someone posted in a Gig Harbor community Facebook group about seeing a peacock earlier that day, Anderson shared one of her photos.

In between jokes about how Peacock Hill got its name , there was a debate in the comments about whether the birds residents were seeing are wild or if they are escaped pets.

The consensus among many locals, and from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, is that the birds aren’t so unusual in the area.

“Peacocks are not native to Washington,” Bridget Mire, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Gateway via email Tuesday. “These are all escaped domesticated animals and have been in the Gig Harbor area for years.”

Asked about the size of the population, what impact they have on the local ecosystem, if the animals thrive here, and whether there’s an effort to capture them, Mire said the state doesn’t track specifics.

“WDFW does not manage domesticated animals, so we don’t have population figures, nor have we been involved in any efforts to capture these peacocks,” Mire wrote. “Non-native species can sometimes have negative effects on ecosystems and native species, so releasing domesticated animals into the wild is discouraged.”

The agency also doesn’t track where else in the state this has happened.

“There may be other places in Washington where domestic peacocks have escaped, but we don’t have specifics as to locations and populations,” Mire wrote.

KREM reported about efforts to relocate a peacock population in Sultan to a refuge in 2010, after the birds became a nuisance in the city.

And in 2009 The Bellingham Herald reported the Whatcom Humane Society was getting two peacock calls a week, as sightings in the area surged.

Anderson and her husband drove around Peacock Hill Tuesday to try to find more of the birds in the Gig Harbor area, but no luck. He suggested they put more of the songbird feed mix the peacock seemed to like on their patio.

Anderson thinks it would be fun if residents all reported where they’ve seen the birds.

“Maybe we can start to figure out what their range is,” she said.