By Edward Dewulf-Peters and Ashley Pemberton via SWNS
A flock of runaway peacocks is ruffling feathers in a sleepy village after mysteriously appearing out of nowhere.
The noisy ‘muster’ of peacocks have been helping themselves to bird-feeders and ravaging local allotments at Eaton, a quiet suburb of Norwich in Norfolk.
Resident June Woodhouse, 80, came face-to-face with one on her driveway in in Eaton, in a moment captured on camera by her husband Michael, 81.
Locals have been left baffled by where the peacocks have come from and while they are unsure how many there is, they believe there may be as many as four of them.
And some neighbors have cried fowl after they began helping themselves to birdfeeders in gardens and destroying allotments.
June, a retired PA, said: “They’ve got to eat something. but when they get comfortable somewhere they dig in, so we try to get them to move on to reduce damage.”
Retired accountant Michael said: “They’ve just turned up. We don’t know how many there is, we don’t see them as a group, but we assume there’s three or four.
“A few weeks ago, one was coming up from the marshland area and we locked eyes and he turned around and waddled off.
“There is a village south of us where peacocks have apparently gone missing, but it’s six or seven miles away and they’re not great flyers.
“One came wandering up the driveway and June started accosting it, saying ‘what on earth are you doing here?
“She thought it was a statue until it moved. It started waddling towards her.
“She had a word with it as it was trying to get through our gate to eat our plants and then shooed it off down the lane.
“Nobody has any idea where they came from and they keep coming back.
“As well as making noise at all hours of the day, the peacocks are eating any and all vegetation they can find, destroying gardens and allotments in the area.”
Next door, neighbors Rachel and Tim said although the birds are beautiful, they don’t want them in their garden or loitering around the street.
Tim said: “They’re very nice but not on my patch, thank you very much.”
Not all in the village have been anti-peacocks, with some welcoming their new neighbors.
One shopkeeper at Cringleford Stores said: “I never hear anyone complaining about them being a nuisance. They just do their own thing.”
In April, two Indian Blue peacocks were spotted perched on the roof of a home in Locksley Road, Tuckswood, just one mile away.
While peacocks are capable of flight, they can only fly short distances.
Last month, sleep-deprived Terri Sykes told how villagers in Osset, West Yorks., were being kept awake at night by a peacock that had been flying onto people’s roofs.
