Take a moment from your busy day to relax and observe all the ways to pester a peahen, at her insistence.
For the birds that like pets, do beak rubs tend to be their favorite? They seem to ask for more pretty consistently
Yep! They like break rubs best, followed by jaw rubs under the jaw, followed by gentle neck rubs where their head is in my hand and my thumb goes over and over the spot behind their jaw/ear. They also enjoy a finger stroking over the top of their heads (especially if their jaw is resting on my hand), and having their little head held like a stick shift (like being tucked into their wing to sleep I guess, because they'll fall asleep like that if they're already sitting down). They don't seem to mind the neck pets where I circle my fingers around their neck and stroke down (but they also don't particularly ask for it), and Bug likes her saddle pet (rapidly and harder than you'd expect, more like you're trying to brush something off her that's a little stuck on...I don't know why she's like that), but none of them really like anything past about mid back to be touched. Some of them have liked feet rubs (Princess is going to be like that, maybe Dragon too, but Bug and Mantis are Not).
This is, I think, tragic for them all. Visitors who want to pet them rarely want to put fingers too close to beaks, so they just end up mildly annoying the birds trying to pet them on the back like a cat or dog. I regret to inform you that peafowl have no bones and their necks are very long, it doesn't matter where you pet them... If they want to bite you, they will. The birds WANT you to pester them in the face, that is counterintuitively where you are least likely to get a hard bite. They show affection through face and neck preening. But I cannot convince anyone to pet them in the face like they want.
