RICHMOND HEIGHTS — The third floor of St. Mary's Medical Center was abuzz Friday over peacocks on the roof.

A guy talked about the birds on his cell phone. A woman wondered if they were the same birds she saw crossing Skinker Boulevard earlier in the morning.

Squirrels and pigeons are frequent visitors to the sprawling rooftops of the medical complex, staffers said.

Peacocks, well, that's a new one.

"We heard the report that someone saw peacocks, but we just thought it was someone's medication," quipped Mike Vigeant, who works for the hospital's plant operations.

Security and building operations teams got serious after receiving nearly a dozen calls about the colorful birds, eventually checking the roof of the main hospital building to find a trio of feathered visitors perched on a ledge, outside the third and fourth floors.

The birds were not injured, and an amused building staff had no plans to remove them, since they posed no risk to the hospital or themselves. The Richmond Heights Fire Department had no plans to remove the birds, either, although firefighters joked that maybe a rooftop landing by an emergency helicopter would scare them off.

The three birds fluttered between a gravel roof and a ledge, oblivious to the attention.

Pigeons, and what they leave behind, "foul up" air conditioning units and rooftop ventilation equipment, Vigeant said, pleased with his word choice. But the peacocks seemed to be simply providing a distraction.

"They're just here," said Tom Brinkmann, the hospital's director of plant operations and security, as he looked down on them from the hospital's tallest rooftop. "Just perching. They've probably been here before and nobody ever noticed. At some point we'll have to worry about their well-being. Maybe they're lost."

No one knew where the birds came from. The St. Louis Zoo said it isn't missing any peacocks.

Jack Grisham, vice president of animal collections, said the zoo has been getting calls for two or three weeks about a wandering flock of peacocks. Each time, employees do a head count. And each time, he said, all the zoo peacocks are accounted for.

"So they're on the St. Mary's roof?" he said. "We'll add that to our list of sightings."

"We have no idea where they came from, other than we know they aren't ours," Grisham said.

He said some people keep peacocks as pets, and peacocks do escape, just like parakeets and canaries. He said peacocks fly well and easily can reach the roof of a place like St. Mary's.

"They like to roost in trees. Obviously, they found what they consider a high, safe place," Grisham said.

He said reports of peacock sightings mainly have come from neighborhoods adjoining Forest Park.

Tim Smith, ombudsman for the Missouri Department of Conservation, said a reporter's inquiry of whether peacocks can fly was a first for him. "I've had a lot of crazy questions, but this has broken new ground."

Tim O'Neil of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.