Flocks of chickens, some pheasants and a turkey have colonised a park in New Zealand. There are around five flocks of chickens roosting in the south east corner of Cornwall Park in Auckland where officials believe they were dumped by poultry farmers.

The birds, which include half a dozen pheasants freed from a game farm, are causing chaos, bringing traffic to a stop as they cross roads. One stretch of road has even been christened Chicken Corner. Park director Michael Ayrton is happy for the birds to stay and says: "They make people happy, so we are pretty relaxed about it."

The New Zealand Herald reports that staff at the park's restaurant are worried that a turkey called Tommy has gone missing.  He usually visits the kitchen daily but has not been seen since Christmas.

Restaurant manager Neville Edgerton said: "He was pretty special to us. He came down the hill every day, and he'd eat out of your hand.  "We tried to get him to drink a cup of tea but he wasn't keen on that."

Chickens living on a roundabout in the middle of a busy road in a Norfolk village have sent feathers flying.

Norfolk county council and the parish council in Ditchingham, near Bungay, say the birds are a traffic hazard and should be removed but the locals want the birds to stay.  Villagers have even circulated petitions in a bid to have the chickens left alone and while nobody is sure which came first, everyone agrees that the roundabout's been there for at least 50 years.

John Smith, chairman of the parish council, said: "If you're a stranger to the area you don't expect to see chickens on a roundabout. Lorry drivers have stopped and the cars behind them which can't see anything, have gone into them.  They're known as wild chickens but they are not - they are being fed. There are hundreds of them and they're also scratching up people's gardens."

Village postmistress Theresa Jones says the chicken roundabout is a landmark and locals say the chickens are to the area what ponies are to the New Forest, reports the Daily Telegraph's website.  They say the birds rarely stray on to the road and, far from being a danger to traffic, actually help by slowing down drivers.

A goose in the US is so attached to its owners' pick-up truck that it follows the vehicle everywhere.

Ken and Donna Heley cannot leave home without Bubbles flying alongside the driver's window at around 40mph.  No one can work out why the pet bird, from Lidgerwood, North Dakota, has become so attached to the purple Ford pick-up truck.  Ken found the week-old abandoned gosling in one of his fields last April and took him home.

After noticing Bubbles' strange habit, Ken and Donna tried to train him to glide on the passenger side, thinking it safer.  But the goose prefers the driver's side, and refuses to follow any other vehicle.

In a desperate struggle to combat the unwelcome clouds of insects, local authorities have been using both orthodox and unorthodox means to beat the ravaging hordes. And that includes a million-strong army of ducks. 

A Quack Force
Call them quacks if you must, but authorities in the worst-affected Xinjiang province in China have recruited locust-eating ducks to combat the menace, the official Xinhua news agency has reported. 

The "duck soldiers," specially trained by farmer Yang Dayuan, are capable of eating more than a pound of locusts every day. What's more, they even eat locust eggs that are laid in the marshy alkaline wastelands. 

An environmentally friendly locust-crunching method, the duck soldiers add a boost to the circle of life, Yang told the British daily The Times. "The ducks will grow healthy and fat and will get a higher price on the market after they retire from pest-control duty." 

To get the entire article, CLICK HERE.
(Thanks to Linda of Brainybirds.com for putting us on to this one.)