An animal rescue team has saved a third peacock in just six months after a mysterious spate of the birds going roaming around part of north Kent.

Volunteers from Dartford Animal Rescue Team (DART) were called to their latest mission by a resident who had spotted the small feathered creature in his garden in Parrock Avenue, Gravesend.

The team dashed from Dartford but by the time they arrived at around 7.30pm, she had wandered off towards a busy road with a large field on one side.

The team of three volunteers, with the help of the resident who called them out, spent an hour looking for the bird but with a large field to check and darkness falling, their search proved fruitless.

Volunteer Ciara O’Hare said: “We just had to hope she had found somewhere safe for the night.

“She had not been spotted before so we didn’t know if she was able to survive for a night out in the wild on her own like the previous peacocks we have caught.”

Two days later, on Tuesday, September 17, the team was called again when the peacock was spotted in a garden in Joy Road, a few streets from where she had last been seen.

Ciara, her sister Rosie and colleague Melissa Doris raced to the scene at 2pm.

Ciara said: “It was light so we had more time to play with.

“We had asked the lady who called to keep an eye on the peacock while it was in her garden and she had given it some food and rung her son to tell him to come in from school with his bike through the front garden rather than the back so as not to scare it.”

When the “dream team” - which Ciara called them after rescuing the first peacock in April - arrived, they quickly caught the bird.

Ciara explained: “I managed to catch her in a net within a few minutes of arriving.

“She was behind a pond so Rosie and Melissa covered her escape routes and I went over the pond with the pole and net and got her.

“They are not the easiest creatures to catch.”

Ciara said closer examination revealed it was actually a young peahen who still had some of her white baby feathers.

She thinks she may have escaped from the same place as the two other roaming peacocks.

She said: “There is a man who is known to keep peacocks in Gravesend but he has assured us they are not his.

“We think it may be someone else who has started to keep them and is having trouble keeping the enclosure secured.”

The peahen, who has been named Enya, was spotted just two months after a “visibly unwell” peacock was seen roaming the streets of Vigo village.

The bird, affectionately dubbed Rodney by the community, had become a familiar and welcome sight for around a year and was often seen strutting along driveways and perched on roofs.

But after sightings of a skinny Rodney wandering onto roads and reports of children shooting catapults at him, a plan was hatched to catch him and take him to a vet.

DART carried out the rescue after receiving concerns from six different residents about the welfare of the male bird.

Speaking at the time Ciara said: “We usually do wildlife, not domestic, rescues but we felt we had to step in. He was visibly unwell even before examining him.”

Before Rodney, the team was called out in April to a rowdy peacock which had been roaming the streets and hopping onto houses and fences for more than six months around the Rochester Road area in Gravesend.

Residents had grown fond of him and named him Saataj.

Each rescued bird has been taken to exotic specialists Trinity Vet Centre in Maidstone before being quarantined, and then taken to start a new life at The Retreat Animal Rescue Farm Sanctuary in High Halden, Ashford.

There, the peacocks and peahens receive ongoing care and mix with their own species alongside ducks and chickens as part of the 200 animals looked after at the centre, which is open to the public.