@emilymbender

You attribute the image in your medium article to commons.wikimedia. But actually it was imported to commons from Flickr (meaning it can possibly be a case of flickr-washing (the process of uploading a foto to Flickr (that has nearly no save guards) and then importing it to commons to circumvent the safe guards of commons as commons relies on Flickr to deliver reliable content). What gives it away? The file name includes a large nunber - its Flickr-id. The source field and the author field in the information template. Both are links to Flickr. The Name of the uploader not matching the name of the author. And most importent: the accessment template by the Flickr Review Bot (FlickreviewR 2), proveing it was posted on Flickr with a license compatible with commons.

Is it a authentic baby peacock? Very probably yes: It is used in a number of wikipedias, especially the english language wikipedia.

How else could this be checked? By looking at the Flickr page, the author page on Flickr and other contributions by the author on Flickr.

Why should it not be trusted? The files metadata (EXIF) give as author „picasa“ (an image processing software - it has been digitally altered).

I have drawn all this from the image page on commons only (desktop version. On mobile you have to scroll to the bottom and click „desktop“ to view it).

This specific foto has been imported in 2018, but even if it was imported this year, it could still be verified at Flickr.