UPDATE: |Cute moment newborn duckling is reunited with mum after two-hour rescue operation News

The heartwarming scenes played out on a canal in Oldham

This is the heartwarming moment a tiny newborn duckling rescued from a storm drain is reunited with its mum.

Video footage captured by the RSPCA after a two hour-long rescue operation to free the trapped bird shows the tiny duckling excitedly swimming over to greet her.

The animal welfare charity said mum ‘instantly recognised’ the duckling’s chirps – and the rescue saga in Oldham had a very happy and cute ending.

Now the RSPCA has thanked a member of staff from an ice cream parlour for her assistance after she helped to rescue the duckling, which is thought to have been born just days earlier.

The worker had just finished her shift at Grandpa Greene’s Luxury Ice Cream, but remained at the scene to assist Animal Rescue Officer Lee Ferrans on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal near Ward Lane in Diggle last Wednesday (April 9).

The tiny duckling had fallen more than five feet through a grid onto a pile of twigs and debris at the bottom of the storm drain on the canal.

Lee said: “I wasn’t able to lift the grid so the only thing I could do was push an extendable pole straight down and try to catch the duckling in a net. There wasn’t a lot of room for manoeuvre, and the net kept catching on all the debris.

“Just when I thought I’d been successful, the duckling kept disappearing into a drain on one side and then popping out again.

“A member of staff from Grandpa Greene’s had just finished her shift and came across to the other side of the canal to help me. I unscrewed the top of the pole with the net and held it down on one side of the drain while she used another section to gently encourage the bird to go into the net.

“It was quite a long and painstaking rescue, but we eventually managed to bring the little one back up safely after more than two hours.”

The duckling swam away with her mum and sibling, with the family now believed to be doing well on the canal, added the RSPCA.

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