Ram Pasture Round-Up––

Safe Homes Found For Abandoned Domestic Ducks And Geese

By Dottie Evans

Several concerned animal lovers cooperated last weekend at Newtown’s Ram Pasture in the trapping and rescue of a group of some 24 ducks and geese that had been abandoned at Hawley Pond during recent months.

Since these were domesticated birds bred for their meat or kept as pets, they were ill equipped to survive in the wild and needed shelter from the cold and from predators.

Newtown resident Nancy Sprung had asked volunteers to feed them cracked corn or duck pellets until homes could be found. She organized a tag team of volunteers and was prepared to find homes for them if they could be caught, but with bitter cold winter weather looming the rescue efforts accelerated.

A Newtown couple, Brian and Jenny Williams, called Ms Sprung on Friday to say they were interested in taking the Muscovy ducks. So when Ms Sprung arrived at the Ram Pasture at noon Saturday and saw all the birds were gone, she knew where the ducks might be.

But where were the geese?

Luckily, a nearby Ram Pasture resident came out of his house and told Ms Sprung about the mass rescue that had taken place between 9:30 and 11 am on Saturday.

Jenny Williams told The Bee Tuesday that the ducks were doing well.

“When the temperatures plummeted, we decided to get them into shelter right away,” Mrs Williams said Tuesday.

Ms Sprung visited the Williams’ hay-filled barn after the capture and saw the Muskovies in their “coop,” which she said was “cozy and clean and had a heat lamp in it.”

“I could swear I saw relief on those little duckie faces. They looked relaxed and comfortable,” Ms Sprung added.

One large male Rouen duck that resembled a mallard was kindly handed over to Ms Sprung when she told Mrs Williams she had been keeping an eye on it and hoped to eventually bring it home.

“We were glad to give the Rouen to Nancy since our big male goose was beginning to feel threatened by it,” Mrs Williams said.

She added that the rest of the ducks were looking much better and had already started preening the ice off their wings as soon as they got them home.

13 Geese Herded            Into Nets

The fate of the 13 geese was a bit more complicated, but everything turned out well as Ms Sprung eventually discovered.

One of the individuals who braved the subzero temperatures at the Ram Pasture Saturday morning was Patrick Moore, a 15-year-old boy from Pound Ridge, N.Y., who admits to a “passion” for rescuing ducks and geese that are abandoned nearby ponds and lakes. He is in the ninth grade at Fox Lane High School in Bedford.

Apparently, Patrick had been in contact with a bird rehabilitation group located in Pound Ridge, and he was called by one of the group’s members who lived in Newtown not far from the Ram Pasture.

“They told me about the problem there and I decided to go try to help because those ducks didn’t look so great. They had been hiding in the pipes [culverts] to get out of the wind,” Patrick said during a phone interview Tuesday.

Arriving at the Ram Pasture Saturday morning, Patrick and a friend used their long netted poles to catch the ducks and herd the geese. They asked onlookers to hold hands and make a barrier and the geese were finally rounded up.

After being loaded into a couple of vans, they were taken to a temporary home on Brushy Hill Road, as well as to Patrick’s home in Pound Ridge, where he keeps a number of birds and has fresh water and a shelter with heat lamps and food. From there, safe homes have been found for them all.

When told about the successful rescue of the geese, Mrs Williams said she was grateful that people stepped forward to help the birds.

“But I wish the town would put a sign up down there so this wouldn’t happen again. It is cruel to abandon birds in this way.”