Mission of mercy: freeing stuck ducks

How do ducks get stuck on ice? That’s the issue that has animal rescue officers along the Niagara river exasperated.

Over the past few weeks, Fort Erie SPCA officer Mark Dickson and his colleagues have been responding to rescue calls on the Niagara River to help ducks and swans stuck to the frozen ice near shore.

“At this point here, the ice was about four inches thick. These two were already deceased. There were two still alive. One about five feet out, one about three feet out.”

“I was able to get the one. Get my hand on the underbelly. Splash some water on it to release it. He flew off which was great.”

The other one was barely alive. It was weak from struggling, and died shortly after.

Dickson says he’s made more than a dozen waterfowl rescues in February alone. These are birds whose wet feathers freeze on ice in an instant.

He saved the life of a swan that was frozen to a driveway in Black Creek. Dickson pried his feathers from the ice, warmed him up at the shelter and then let him loose.

Walk along the icy shore of the Niagara River and you’ll see dead ducks. The ones that are trapped and in distress are easy to spot.

“Their underbellies are frozen to the ice. They’re flapping their wings in place. They just can’t release themselves.”

Fishermen familiar with the Niagara River say they’ve seen this kind thing before when the winter spirals into a deep freeze. It’s just that we don’t usually get persistent, bitterly cold temperatures that often.