The Story of the Rescuing of 10 Mallard Ducklings

Day before yesterday, while walking down the council drain, a bunch of feathers trailed along the top of the water. I followed the trail and it led to a hawk, which flew off hastily. There below the light fence of wire, and beyond the grassy bank in the drain water, was a body of a young male duck. The hawks are hungry, and I guess, something had to give. Now all the other ducks and ducklings that the drain had recently accumulated have disappeared. Which reminds me of the 10 ducklings we rescued a while back.

Here’s the story:

We first spotted the female duck with her ducklings when they were a day old. They were like tiny little bumble bees buzzing busily about on the drain’s water. Delightful to watch, but hard to count them, as they were so fast. Two days later, while walking the dogs along the banks, we frightened a hawk, and peering at what it had been doing, we sadly realise, it's the mother duck. She had been killed. As we carried on walking we spot her 10 little ducklings in the water, at the very end. If they get past this point it would be very tricky to rescue them.

From the bank, above the drain, I extend my right arm and herd the little ducklings away from the end, and my partner walks the dogs back so he can put them away and pick up nets, container and cover for the rescue. When I get the little ducklings near where their mum was killed they turn and dash back down the drain to where they were earlier. So now I have to hop in (the drain stinks like hell and is freezing cold) and herd them up again. Usually the drain’s mud sucks you down deep but it has been left mostly dry. The bottom is fairly firm.

When my partner comes back he pops in the water further up from where I am, and we carefully trap and herd the ducklings between us. At times, we use the nets, or we have success catching by hand. After two hours of effort we have finally managed to catch nine ducklings. Now, it’s down to one last duckling, which was swimming very quickly. But, as the duckling came toward me, I miscalculate the catch, which made it turn and race toward my partner, who was waiting with the net. A very quick movement from him, then the comment ‘Bugger, I missed it!’ rang out loudly, and me staring at what he had caught, replying, ‘Um, you might want to take another look!’

They were finally all caught.

All the ducklings were placed in a large bucket with a cover to keep them calm and warm.

Getting them set up was frantic. Usually, it's only one duckling we would normally be looking after, but 10 is a whole different kettle of ducks. We raced about to find a heat lamp, water containers and food (mash, wheat, bread, grit and whatever else we could get our hands on) and finally we ended up with something of an, ‘it will do for the night,’ scenario.

Two little ducklings died within the first two days and we were devastated. But nine days in we had eight healthy ducklings growing fast and demanding more food.