Sawt Falasteen - Wild peacocks bring delight, despair to Italian village

The birds, with their iridescent, sweeping trains, perch on rooftops and fences across Punta Marina, a village on the Adriatic Sea coast in the Emilia Romagna region, east of Bologna.

Their booming numbers have split the town in two -- one side thinks they should be left alone; the other wants them taken to more suitable pastures.

The once-revered creatures appear throughout nearby Ravenna's prized mosaics as a symbol of immortality -- but 81-year-old Marco Manzoli, a retired bus driver, said they were essentially delinquents who poo a lot.

"The population has boomed over 30 years and it's too big now: they disrupt sleep, disrupt traffic and dirty the ground with ice-cream-like excrement, which we then step in," Manzoli said.

Nearby, six peacocks saunter through a crossroads, gazing at their reflections in parked cars and shop windows.

"The peacocks climb onto the cars... and scratch them," Manzoli said, creating fears "tourists won't come on holiday anymore unless they have a garage to park their car in."

Though there has been no official head count, the birds are reported to number some 120.

- 'Something magic' -

Pastry chef Claudio Ianiero, 64, told AFP that peacocks have long lived in the pine forest behind the village, but began seeking safety from predators by nesting in the gardens of abandoned houses.

"Out there they have many natural enemies, such as wolves and foxes. Here however, they have none, and they are proliferating in a way that is difficult to control," he said.

As a peacock neared the window of the bakery, eyeing the buttery croissants displayed inside, Ianiero denied frenzied media reports of an invasion, a sanitary emergency, or locals being forced to move away.

The chef, who boasts peacock biscuits among his delicacies, says locals have lived in harmony with them for years.

The crested birds, in their myriad blues, are "something magic" for Punta Marina, he said.

But Mara Capasso, a 57-year-old supermarket cashier, said she had neighbours woken nightly by mating calls.

The peacock problem had "split the town into two factions", she said.

The birds should be "taken to pine forests, woods, places where they can be in their habitat, because they should never live on concrete.

"They need to be in their natural environment," she said.

- Peacock 'ranger' -

Ravenna city council has toyed with various strategies to manage the population over the years.

But an attempt to relocate them in 2022 fell through largely due to opposition from animal rights groups.

It may have more success now, for "we are getting adoption offers from all over Italy," Ianiero said.

Though the council launched a campaign in 2024 to instruct locals and holidaymakers on how to live alongside the birds -- such as not feeding them -- local Emanuele Crescentini said more must be done.

Kitted out in a fluorescent orange jacket, 50-year-old Crescentini said he had appointed himself a peacock "ranger", walking the streets to protect the birds from irate locals.

"There's plenty of space in Punta Marina, they could spread out everywhere and cause no trouble at all," he said.

"We could set an example of intelligent and mature coexistence. It can be done."

Q.Jaber--SF-PST