Blackpool driver is praised after helping to catch ducks

A Blackpool man pulled over on the hard shoulder to help police chase a flock of ducklings on the motorway.
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Wayne Wareing, 40, was on the M61 when he saw cars ahead of him swerving, with one of them almost crashing into another.

After spotting the hazard – nine little ducks waddling innocently across the busy carriageway – he stopped, put his hazard lights on, and called for help.

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He said: “As soon as I saw the ducklings I stopped in front of them and tried to direct them off the motorway while in my van and through the field next to the hard shoulder. It was definitely a task, with the ducklings going in every direction but the right one.”

A Blackpool man pulled over on the hard shoulder to help police chase a flock of ducklings on the motorway.A Blackpool man pulled over on the hard shoulder to help police chase a flock of ducklings on the motorway.
A Blackpool man pulled over on the hard shoulder to help police chase a flock of ducklings on the motorway.

Two police officers arrived, followed by another two highway patrol officers, and the motorway was closed to junction nine on Wednesday morning.

“All five of us were just chasing these little ducks around the motorway for a good 40 minutes and that’s not even including the good 45 minutes I was doing it on my own,” Wayne said. “We tried everything to catch them from waving our coats to the right direction to following them with a box.

“It was definitely a sight to see. Those ducklings were a lot faster than you think.”

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The ducklings were eventually caught, and the motorway was re-opened shortly after around 9am.

In a tweet, the North West Motorway Police said the ducklings were ‘safe’, and said a ‘huge thanks to two members of the public that stopped’.

“We think our troops did a quacking job!,” it added.

In 2014, a woman was jailed in Canada after stopping her car in a live motorway lane to help ducks. Two people died after hitting her.

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