Problem peacocks won't flee nest

The peacocks are proving difficult to catch

Peacocks are giving hotel staff in Denbighshire the run around as they try to catch them for their new owners.

Birds at Ruthin Castle have bred to unmanageable levels, forcing staff to look for new homes for them.

Up to 50 peacocks will leave but so far only five hens have been caught.

Head gardener Sue Marie Roberts said: "They're very difficult to catch. They can fly quite high from vertical take-off. We had a netted area but that's not worked."

Three breeding pairs will be kept at Ruthin Castle but the others will leave.

The hotel has been inundated with calls from people as far as Anglesey and the north west of England offering to give the birds a home.

"They're all going to local people and the majority are people who keep peacocks anyway," said head gardener Sue Marie Roberts.

"We're in the process of catching them and handing them out to people."

Staff have caught five hens so far

They tried to corner them into the netted area at the weekend but that proved unsuccessful.

Ms Roberts said the birds are nice to look at admitted they would be even nicer if they were a "rarer sight".

"They're only causing a problem because there are so many. They will eat herbaceous plants and they take the new shoots off plants too," she added.

Ruthin Castle started off with just three pairs of peacocks and hens in their extensive grounds 30 years ago.

The birds are often described as "difficult to breed" but the hotel's management said they have obviously not had that problem.