A Coconut Grove blogger is crying fowl over the removal of more than a dozen peacocks from his neighborhood.
Tom Falco, who operates the Coconut Grove Grapevine, is questioning whether the owners of Sandy Acre Avocado & Mango in Redland stole the peacocks which once freely roamed his neighborhood.
However, the owners of the Redland farm say it was a Miami city official who approached them about accepting the birds because they were creating a nuisance in the Coconut Grove neighborhood.
“We were delighted to receive them,” said Sidney Robinson. “We already had eight birds. And this is a bird sanctuary. This is a farming community.”
Robinson, who did not recall the name of the city official who approached him, said trappers started bringing the birds to him beginning in March. Altogether, they brought about 15 birds, he said.
Falco, who is usually aware if anybody even sneezes within Coconut Grove, did not learn of the transfer of the birds until the Miami Herald reported it over the weekend, even though a Discovery Channel crew was on hand to film the trapping of the squawking birds.
He immediately penned a blog post stating the following:
Sidney Robinson, owner of Sandy Acre Avocado & Mango and his wife Maryannette have some explaining to do and some peacock returning to do, too. I have contacted them asking who asked them to remove the peacocks. We'll see what they have to say. I have also contacted the Discovery Channel, who filmed the whole thing for a tv show.
When contacted by NBC Miami, Falco said he was trying to get to the bottom of this.
Local
"I don't know how this is legal, but I live next to a hospital, so I expect to hear ambulances," he said.
"If people move onto the block where peacocks have lived for generations, they need to live in the peacocks' environment, not the other way around.
"We will find out if this was done by one individual on the block and have the peacocks physically returned if necessary."
Meanwhile, Robinson is taken aback by Falco’s insinuations.
“We didn’t ask for the birds. They asked us to take them off their hands. We were just trying to be accommodating,” he said.
“We were just trying to let nature be preserved.”
