A FLOCK of ducks get an escort across busy roads to their nightly nesting spot.
Volunteer wardens watch as they waddle from a river to a town centre car park.
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Around 20 make the 15-minute journey every evening at 8.30pm from the Cod Beck in Thirsk, North Yorks, to the market square — where they settle down on the cobbles until around 4.30am.
A quack team of locals make sure they don’t get in a flap on the journey and put protective cones around the birds at night.
The ducks make the trip between mid June and early December.
It is thought they want to evade mink, foxes and rats.
The 15 volunteers started a rota after four ducks were run over by a car last year.
Organiser Jodie Wood, 41, said: “I’ve never seen this done before.
“Sometimes we get drunk revellers trying to touch them, mess with them and walk through them.
“But 99 per cent of the time it’s fine and people come to chat and take pictures, Something is scaring them away.
“But we’ve not had any fatalities since we started. We are lucky to have so much support.”
Fellow volunteer Emma-Jayne Hutchings, 48, said: “It’s really heart-warming and adorable.
“You know when they are leaving as they all start quacking, then they march up in two battalions.”
