Sarah, aka @billowandmull on Instagram, regularly captures the quiet beauty of the natural world in posts that she shares with her social media followers. Recently, Sarah was taking pictures of birds in the wild when she noticed a group of three ducks.
At first glance, it seemed like one of the ducks had recently passed away. She wasn’t moving, and her head and neck were flopped over on the surface of the water. The other two ducks just hovered nearby. Then they saw Sarah.
“They did something absolutely bizarre,” Sarah wrote in a video. “They started pushing their dead friend towards me and looking at me expectantly.”
As the dead duck floated closer, Sarah noticed her eye opening. It turns out, she wasn’t dead at all — she was alive, and she needed help.
“She was breathing in water but couldn’t move,” Sarah wrote.
Eager to assist, Sarah gently lifted the duck’s neck so the water could drain from her beak.
“We’re getting her head up … So she can breathe,” Sarah narrates in a video taken at the time.
Sarah waited patiently as the duck regained her strength.
“She pushed out all of the water she’d taken in,” Sarah wrote. “She composed herself until she felt better.”
