Oakley ducks find love (From Basingstoke Gazette)
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North Waltham ducks will be introduced to mallards at Oakley Pond
5:00pm Thursday 7th March 2013 in Local By Emily Roberts, Chief Reporter
Some of the lonely ducks in Oakley Pond
THREE lonely mallards looking for love could soon find their soulmates after a story in The Gazette helped save their population in a village.
As previously reported, the desperate drakes in Oakley Pond lost all their female companions and needed to find partners to mate with – or face extinction in Oakley.
But thanks to our appeal, in which we asked if any other villages had spare ducks suitable for mating with the mallards, North Waltham Parish Council responded.
Oakley and Deane Parish Councillor Jenny Boutle said: “One of the North Waltham councillors read the piece in The Gazette and emailed me about the ducks. In a subsequent telephone conversation, we discussed the fact that the North Waltham pond has a surplus of ducklings each year.”
The ducklings will be kept in North Waltham until they are old enough to be identified as male or female, and they will then be released into Oakley Pond.
Cllr Boutle added: “I feel it is better to have ducklings as I am concerned that if we imported adult ducks, especially from a nearby location, they would simply fly back to their original home.”
The birds have always been a popular attraction at Oakley Pond, on the corner of Hill Road and Oakley Lane.
Oakley councillors agreed to try and repopulate the pond to save the ducks from extinction.
The ducklings that will be introduced are Khaki Campbells, which should mate with the mallard.
