An exotic bird went on a town centre shopping spree at the weekend.

The peahen strutted about fashion outlet Store Twenty One in Sittingbourne High Street on Saturday afternoon.

Assistant manager Maria Day said that, despite the mountain of clothes on offer, the flighty customer appeared only interested in itself.

She said: “It was a definite surprise. A young boy came up to me and said ‘There’s a peacock in your shop’.

“I thought he was joking, but he certainly wasn’t. It was a large bird, and I don’t know where it came from.

“Apparently, it had been wandering outside for a while and then wandered into our store at about 2.30pm.

“When I saw it, it was looking at itself in the mirror. It should really have gone to Peacocks, further up the road.”

Maria said she “shooed” the bird from the shop and called the Kent Wildlife Rescue Service to take it under its wing.

Lorraine St John, who runs the Sheerness-based volunteer group, said: “I grabbed hold of her, but by the time my colleague arrived to help, I couldn’t hold on any longer.

“The bird was frightened and ran and I was left with a handful of feathers.

“We spent an hour trying to find her and we’ll keep coming back everyday until we get her.”

Lorraine said she thinks the “fairly young female bird” may have alighted from a nearby cricket ground or golf course.

She said although it was the first time she had been called to rescue a peahen, the high street was no stranger to funny little creatures.

“I’ve been called out to chicks, rabbits and cockerels in town before now,” she said.

“But the weirdest case I went to was a few years ago when we had a horse running loose in St Michael’s Road.”

The RSPCA said it was also called to hunt the peahen. A spokesman said it had so far evaded officers but it was “healthy and uninjured”.

The bird was spotted outside the Mecca bingo hall in the High Street on Sunday night which proves its number is far from up.