George hasn’t been spotted since May, but that hasn’t stopped students from making posters and instagram accounts dedicated to locating him
Photo by Paul Razzell.
UVic’s beloved peacock George, who has been roaming the campus since 2022, has been sparsely seen in recent months, raising questions about his whereabouts and well-being.
In 2022 a first-year student started an Instagram account in honour of the bird and assigned him the name George. Since then his fame has only grown and today the account’s following sits at just over 5 000.
Since his initial appearance, George’s presence has become a prominent part of campus culture.
In mid-September, some students started to notice a lack of George sightings on campus and became concerned. Multiple posts were made to the UVic subreddit to bring attention to his absence.
Two UVic students, Lucien Letvinckuk and Ben Mackenzie, started an Instagram account dedicated to locating George, and made their first post on Sept. 19.
“I heard about George way before I even went to UVic. He’s kind of a living legend, and the fact that he’s such a part of UVic’s culture now, and he suddenly disappeared, I feel like something should be done about it,” said Letvinckuk in an interview with the Martlet.
While many people have reported sightings through the summer semester and the start of the fall semester, Mackenzie said that the last sighting confirmed by photographic evidence was in May.
The UVic Peacock club, founded in 2023 and entirely dedicated to sharing sightings of George, first noticed his absence in July, and joined in the search for him with posters in mid-September.
On Sept. 22, the club president shared in the club Discord server that there were “confirmed” George sightings in both August and September, but no photographic evidence accompanied the claim.
A member of the UVic Peacock club created a prototype website for people to track and report George sightings, as well as optionally include a photograph.
The most recent sighting reported with photo-evidence to accompany the claim was on Aug. 5. While there are two reports of sightings in September, none are accompanied by photo evidence.
Additionally, neither the ‘Where’s George’ or the Peacock club Instagram accounts have been updated to reflect these sightings.
Ann Nightingale, a volunteer with Rocky Point Bird Observatory for over 30 years, said in an interview with the Martlet that “it is certainly possible” that George simply wandered off campus, “although they tend to stay where they’re getting food.”
She said that if George’s food sources went home for the summer, it is possible he wandered off of campus to look for food.
Dr. Gavin Hanke, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Royal BC Museum, said in a statement to the Martlet that he assumed George “either died of old age, got taken by someone’s off leash dog, or by a cougar.”
“Is it possible a cougar could get a peacock? Absolutely,” Nightingale said, but she pointed out that it is unlikely for a cougar and peacock to cross paths at UVic. She added that cougars are likely to search for prey that won’t fight back, “because peacocks can be very good fighters too.”
Peacocks typically live between ten and 25 years in the wild, and some reports suggest individual peacocks have lived up to 40 or 50 years in captivity, however we do not know George’s age.
In an interview with the Martlet in 2023, Hanke suggested that the most likely explanation of George’s arrival at UVic is that he escaped and was taken from the Beacon Hill Park petting zoo, and dropped on campus or nearby.
Hanke said in a statement to the Martlet that “the peacock is an exotic species and should not have been loose in the first place,” and “hopefully no one will release another one on campus.”
“They don’t need to be moved by humans, but they often are,” Nightingale said, “they are moving themselves around too.”
Letvinckuk also raised concerns with the “commercialization” of George. “UVic has made George part of their brand,” he said referring to the peacock-themed merchandise sold in UVic’s Bookstore.
“He is just this wild bird that doesn’t belong to campus,” Letvinckuk added. He said that if they locate George off campus, they aren’t going to bring him back. “We’re more worried… we want to make sure he’s okay.”
The search for George continues, and behind him is an entire community awaiting his safe return.
With files from Angus Whitelaw-Wood.
