[QUOTE=Xyzzy;434791][URL]http://imgur.com/vNttzAD[/URL][/QUOTE]
I have no pictures, though others do, but we had a duck situation where I work. It seems a mama mallard found a third floor roof-top planter with large shrubs an ideal nesting site. Unfortunately, said roof is probably between forty and fifty feet above a concrete sidewalk. When people became aware of the situation, Mama was at ground level, and the ducklings ( 12 total) were either clustered at the edge of the roof deck, outside the railing, or had jumped off. Of the early jumpers, one died on impact and another got into a storm drain.
There was a small crowd on the sidewalk, with Mama under a parked car. When they devised a safety net from somebody's jacket, I went back to the roof deck, alerted the rescuers, and gently shooed the remaining ducklings over the edge. All were caught in the jacket, accompanied by such comedies as one duckling going down a sleeve.
In the end, the ten survivors were collected in a cardboard box with towels and a grill on top to keep them in. Someone tracked down a rescue organization, "Chicago Bird Collision". This is a group which hunts through downtown Chicago early in the morning, looking for dead or injured birds which have run into buildings. They transported the ten ducklings, plus two more found downtown, to a nature center in Lincoln Park. From there, they were to be taken to a suburban center which specializes in fostering and releasing orphaned and injured birds. There, they were to join a proper duck family for natural rearing. :smile: :<3:
Sadly, Mama was back throughout the evening, searching around the deck for her babies. :sad: The rescue people assured us that despite the pathos, the offspring had a far better chance of survival than if she had tried to lead them the several blocks to the lake shore.
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