Peacocks are wandering a Camden County borough. Local police don’t know where they came from.
The Berlin Borough Police Department has received about 10 calls for peacock sightings since last week, a career first for the borough’s police chief.
A party of peafowl has spent the past 10 days roaming Berlin Borough in Camden County, and residents and police don’t know where they came from.
Facebook user Ryan Bigwood of Berlin posted photos last Wednesday featuring a few peacocks wandering Evanine Drive at the Woods, a residential neighborhood on the eastern side of the borough. On Thursday, Bigwood confirmed that three birds, seemingly a family, were still wandering the street a week later, moving from house to house.
More social media posts followed, including one by the Berlin Police Department on Sunday featuring an artificial intelligence-generated image of an officer riding a horse-sized peacock.
“This is not the first time they have appeared in recent years and around our community and others,” the post read. “Please only contact your emergency services if there is something alarming about them.”
Peacocks are no strangers to making South Jersey news. Popeye, a beloved peacock and honorary mascot for Clarksboro in Gloucester County, died in 2019 after someone shot him. In March, a Cherry Hill couple asked the public to find the owner of a peacock that wandered their property for days.
In Philadelphia in 2018, four peacocks escaped from the city’s zoo. At least two were later recovered after wandering I-76, though at least one more was found dead — likely after being hit by a vehicle, a zoo spokesperson said at the time.
Michael Scheer, Berlin Borough’s police chief, said this is the first time in his more than two-decade-long career at the department that he’s had consecutive calls related to peacocks. He has no clue where they came from, how many there are, or where they are now.
“They are not in policy custody, I can tell you that,” Scheer said.
The department has received about 10 recent calls for peacock sightings, Scheer said. On Saturday afternoon, police reported to the Heritage’s Dairy Store on Route 30 and Tansboro Road in Berlin after a car collided with a peacock crossing the street.
The peacock seemed fine and quickly ran off.
“This is definitely the lighter side of the profession,” Scheer said. “They haven’t been aggressive to anybody or anything. They’re just wandering like they’re lost.”
Another Facebook user posted photos of a pair of peafowl, with different coloring than the birds in Bigwood’s post, on a home roof in Berlin on Monday.
Dan Keashen, Camden County’s director of public affairs, said wandering peacocks are not a new phenomenon in South Jersey. Keashen said he lives near a farm in Gibbsboro that allows its peacock population to wander freely from street to street. He drives past the birds every day on his commute to work.
“It’s not an oddity,” Keashen said. “But it’s not like you’ll see them commuting on PATCO either.”
Scheer said his department hasn’t received any peacock-related calls in a few days. But if people do spot the animals, he advises onlookers to treat them as they would any other wild animal. Camden County animal control won’t come pick up the birds, Scheer said, unless they’re injured or contained.
“We have never been trained on how to deal with roaming peacocks,” he said.