Yet another duckling rescue on a roof terrace of a housing block today, this time in SE10. Once again my mum was left in charge of cleaning and feeds whilst Fran and I rushed over there.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, it's so tricky to capture the fully flighted mother duck on these rescues, and she will often become spooked and leave all together, abandoning the babies, so you always arrive dreading splitting up a little family.
For the second time this week, however, we were successful in capturing the mother duck, and very quickly too! I think I have a future as a goal keeper as once again I caught her in my arms like a rugby ball.
Then, as ever it was just a matter of scooping up all the scattering ducklings before relocating the entire family to a more appropriate spot.
We then travelled to the nearest safe body of water at Greenwich Ecology Park. In fact, the keeper at the park, Tony, had rescued ducklings from the same roof terrace on multiple occasions in the past.
Tony and the Ecology Park staff were extremely helpful and even have a little landing strip by one of their lakes for releases. It's always a nerve wracking moment when you let the ducklings go, in case mum decides to fly away, leaving you to re-capture the ducklings, but thankfully that didn't happen - it all went very smoothly.
It's a truly beautiful location and ever more so on a gorgeous sunny day. We hope they'll be very happy in their far more suitable new home. We have now rescued upwards of 70 ducklings and the season has only just started.