A mother's love

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:46 PM on 16th June 2008

Six ducklings were rescued from a sewer after their mother stood by a manhole cover for four hours to raise the alert.

It is thought the fluffy birds fell into a sewer two miles away and their concerned mother followed their cries.

The ducklings were saved from a watery death after neighbours heard them chirping under the manhole.

Peter Elliott, 59, first saw the mother duck waiting by the manhole cover when he went for a morning run at 6am.
It was four hours later at 10am when his daughter Vicki Jefferson and her husband Rob heard the baby birds' calls coming from the drain cover in Barrasford Close, Gosforth.

Friend Jim Calder, 62, a former maintenance manager at the council, fetched a pick, a crowbar and spanners, which the three men used to wrench off part of the heavy manhole cover.
They scooped the ducklings to safety using a fishing net belonging to Mr and Mrs Jefferson's two-year-old son James.

The tiny creatures were placed in the toddler's paddling pool before being carried in a cat basket to the Big Waters pond at Brunswick, where they were freed.

Incredibly, when Northumbrian Water engineers arrived to put the drain cover back on, they worked out the nearest point the ducklings could have got into the surface water sewer was two miles away, near the Three Mile Inn on the Great North Road.

They speculated the mother had walked the distance overland, crossing some of the busiest roads in the city, following their cries, then taking up position on top of the manhole cover.

Mr Elliott, chief executive of Azure Charitable Enterprises, said: 'There was a bit of Dunkirk spirit in the street this morning.'

Mr Calder, said: 'I would love to know how this lovely duck has managed to track its young to a drain cover in our cul-de-sac. It would not budge.

'I was trying to keep my three cats away -they were mesmerised.