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A rogue peacock is terrorising residents in a small market town - ravaging vegetable patches and waking up the neighbourhood at 4.30am.

The anti-social bird, named Percy by locals, is thought to be a love-lorn adolescent searching for a female - and starts loud mating calls at the crack of dawn.

Fed-up residents in Marlborough, Wiltshire, said the final straw was when Percy starting to ravage veg patches - destroying lettuces and courgettes.

Hazel Harvey, 67, said she has had the misfortune of having Percy choose her roof as one of his favourite crowing spots in the early hours of the morning.

Ms Harvey, a retired accountant, said: "It walks along our roof and starts calling at around half past five in the morning, which is not the sort of time that I really want to be woken up at. "

"I have been told it is an adolescent male and that the sound is a mating call. But the mating season ended at the end of June."

"It doesn't have a hope in hell of finding a mate - its tail feathers are very tatty. "

"It's what adolescents do when they are trying to pull birds I guess. But why did it have to be on my roof?"

Peter and Carolyn Nicholls, 78 and 75, described finding the bird making itself comfortable in their garden when they returned from holiday.

Carolyn, a retired nurse, said: "It acted like it owned the place. I found little peck marks on our courgettes. "

"We sort of shooed it away but then it just went up on the roof."

Mr Nicholls said: "It must have come from somewhere. Either somebody kept it as a pet or there must be some sort of specialist living nearby."

Eric Gilbert, 83, a retired headteacher and amateur weatherman born and raised in the area, said he had seen the peacock eating his belovedly hand-grown vegetables.

"I saw it biting into my runner beans. I was at my bedroom window and saw it standing in the middle of my lettuce patch. "

"It had decided to have a different menu for breakfast I think."

He added: "Another time, it buried itself in my lettuce patch, working itself down into the soil, presumably to look after its feathers or to keep itself cool. "

"When I went up to it, it fluffed up its feathers and ran in circles - going a bit berserk!" "

Brendan Palmer, 54, a teacher from Somerset, said he had grown fond of the bird and described how he had noticed that Percy had a "cheeky" personality. "

"His early routine suits me just fine. I get up early to do weights in the morning at around 4.30am. "

"He's my workout alarm. If I hear him crow before I get started, I know I'm running late. "

"Percy is a bird with a serious sense of routine. He comes out of that big tree and goes on to next door's roof to crow at 4.30 am and 9.30pm. Always exactly the same."



Addressing rumours that Percy's crowing is a mating call, Mr Palmer said: "He needs to work on his looks. He's still going through puberty at the minute", before adding: "He is definitely looking for someone though."

"The only thing is he winds up our dogs, Maggie and Luna when he goes on our back lawn and our front lawn. My dog Luna wants to eat him."

Alfie Game, 71, a retired botanist from Marlborough, has also had Percy perching on his roof.

Mr Game described how the peacock almost got stuck on his solar panels when trying to crow from his roof.

"I don't want him up there because he rolls around trying to wrestle his way out."

"If you chase him around he just looks at you with this astonished expression. I once shooed him away from my garden and he went back up like a balloon onto my roof." "

Mr Game added: "He screams for about 20 minutes in the hope that a lady peacock will hear him. "

"But you would have thought that by now he would have realised that there aren't any other peacocks in Marlborough."