One of our neighbours, who lives two houses from ours, caught us as we were returning from our morning ravine walk, to ask for our advice. This was his problem: That morning as he awoke, he heard from outside his bedroom window an unusual sound, that of a duck quacking.

He thought little of it at the time other than that it was unusual. We do have ducks flying over from time to time, but seldom hear them, unlike the geese that fly over, calling from high above. And, in the early spring we occasionally see dabblers in the creek of the ravine up the street, passing through.

Later in the morning he chanced to look out his kitchen window and saw something in his in-ground pool. Out he went, his little cat following him, to discover quite the sight. Two unfeathered, very small brown ducklings were swimming in his pool. It was obvious they would be unable to make their way out of the pool on their own and they were self-protectively evasive. He shooed his cat back into the house. He put a floater into the pool, with some grass and breadcrumbs on it, and eventually the two ducklings made their way onto the floater, one of them nibbling at the grass and crumbs, the other not, before they left it again for the water.

He tried netting them. He looked on the Internet for advice. They were so small, so vulnerable and he felt stricken for them. He wondered how they had got into his pool, wondered where the mother duck was, wondered what he could do to preserve their lives.

He did manage, eventually, to capture the little things, and one of the pair looked in dire straits. He took the long drive out to the extreme west end of the city to deliver them to the Wild Bird Care Centre. There he was told that the ducklings couldn't be more than a week old. That they required the warmth of their mother's body, especially at night. They would be placed in an incubator, they told him; he could call back to ascertain their state, the following day, but not to hold out hope for the less perky of the two; it would not survive.