Only days ago it gave officers the slip, with Camden police admitting on Twitter the bird was "significantly more nimble than most of Team B".
But staff at the Three Acres Community Play Project in Belsize Park this morning spotted it roaming the grounds for the second time in a week - and came up with an inventive ploy by which to capture it.
Ensnared: The peacock was trapped between two football goals using a trail of bread and corn (Picture: Three Acres Community Play Project)
"At 11am when we went out into the main play area it was sitting in one of our flower beds," manager Emma Wiener told the Standard. "We put the football goals in a V-shape and made a little trail of bread and corn - and it followed it in.
"We've managed to do what no one else could. It was just a bit of common sense."
Free bird: The peacock spent a year on the loose (Picture: Three Acres Community Play Project)Soon a crack team of zookeepers were at the site to recapture the bird.
"They just made a little gap in the goals, went in and rugby tackled it," said Ms Wiener. "They carried it into a box and off they went."
Ms Wiener admitted the children at the playschool "wished we could have kept it".
Out and about: The peacock snapped in Hampstead last month (Picture: Fifi Russell)"They loved it," she said. "They were calling it Mr Peacock, but the zoo people said it was actually a peafowl.
"I'm sure people will miss it. It's probably been in lots of people's gardens - it's been fed lots.
"It just wanted to be a free bird."
The bird escaped a year ago after someone left an enclosure open at London Zoo. Since then it has frequently been seen in and around Camden, and police have been summoned on a number of occasions to try and trap it - all in vain.
