Rather surprisingly, I spotted a peacock on our back yard fence a few weeks back. Turns out he wandered away from the Toronto Zoo out an open gate, across the rouge river, up a ravine, and then through the suburbs before deciding on our fence. Our dog REALLY wanted to meet him but that seemed like a bad idea. (We called the zoo and someone came by to pick him up.)
My neighbors (not too close, luckily) used to have peacocks, in a large outdoor enclosure. They are super fucking annoying, every spring they make a huge racket every time they hear a noise. This lasts through summer, then they seem to pipe down.
Apparently the Egyptians used them as guard birds, because they're so predictably re-active to noise.
One day years ago they both escaped in a storm. One was found the next day but the other disappeared.
Fast forward six months, I was at my dentists office, and somehow he mentioned that a peacock showed up near his house six months ago, and it likes to roost on his roof, and they were feeding it. The dentist lives about three miles from me.
Mystery solved, the wandering peacock returned home.
A few years ago it was killed by a raccoon ( *oh no* ).