A PAIR of peacocks have taken up residence in our small garden. They arrived last week, unannounced and uninvited, drawn in by our two pet chickens who share their time between the coop in the garden and the mat in the dining room.

When the peacocks - both juvenile males - appeared, the chickens shouted themselves hoarse in dismay. The peacocks simply lowered their long, dinosaur-like necks, menacingly put their long hooked beaks tight in the little birds' faces, and silently stared at them with large unblinking eyes.

The chickens shut up, and fled into the house, jumping onto the dining room table. With a single step, the peacocks bounced onto the mat. The chickens looked down at them, wondering what on earth to do next.

Eventually, a pecking order was worked out in which the chickens gave all the ground. The peacocks are allowed the best dust-bathing holes beneath the buddleia; they are allowed to eat as much of the chickens' food as they wish and they are allowed to follow the chickens to all their secret chicken-type places.

The only concession that the chickens appear to have wrung out of the peacocks is the decommissioning of their nasty hooked beaks. The peacocks haven't handed in their beaks, but they no longer ram them into the little birds' faces.

So proud are the peacocks with the deal that one of them has taken to strutting around displaying his tail feathers to all the local blackbirds.

The day's terrorising of small, defenceless birds over, the peacocks bounce onto the fence and from there emit their mournful cry, which sounds like a jilted lover drowning slowly in a lake. Then they flap into the tallest tree in the nearby churchyard, and the chickens wearily climb into the sanctuary of their coop.

DICTIONARIES are wonderful things. In trying to spell 'buddleia', I learn that this common shrub is named after a Reverend Adam Buddle from Essex who died in 1715. He was the leading moss expert of his day, and when a new bush was discovered in Peru in 1774, it was given his name. Peruvian buddleias have golden flowers - the purple buddleias ubiquitous in British gardens were discovered about a century later by a Jesuit missionary exploring China. He was called Pere Armand David, which explains why the peacocks are dust-bathing beneath a buddleia davidii.

THE police are using all their powers to crack down on kids who go "cruising" - racing around the streets in their cars. The youngsters, who meet occasionally around midnight when the streets are at their emptiest, have been sent home with a flea in their ear. Quite right.

But in North Yorkshire, the police appear powerless to stop the middle-aged bikers who converge on the moors and the dales when they are at their busiest - every summer Sunday.

So far the cruisers have not killed anyone. But the born-again bikers have killed 16 this year and frightened the life out of countless others.

The police should apply the same tactics to the bikers as they do to the cruisers and send them home with a flea in their visors. And they should tell them that, in tight black leather on the hottest day of the year, they look as ridiculous as a juvenile peacock showing off his tail to a blackbird.