the ducks have an adventurous day out

I think our ducks have a pretty good life. Just before dusk they walk to the duck pen, sometimes storming the henhouse en route to devour any feed the hens might not have finished (usually breaking the food hopper in the process) and after they've been fed they settle down for the night, securely shut away from predatory foxes. During the day they wander around the farm  - congregating in the long grass, picking up the wheat that spills onto the ground by the speed bump during harvest time and splashing around in the pond. Sometimes they wander off to the horse paddocks or into the garden but they usually stay fairly close to the pond.

So what on earth got into their heads yesterday? Why did they decide it would be a good idea to waddle out of the yard, through some undergrowth, under a hedge, across one half of a dual carriageway and settle down in the central reservation of the by-pass? When I found them they looked quite happy there. One of them was sitting down contentedly and the others appeared to be watching the traffic pass by. Luckily there was a break in the traffic and I managed to shush them across the road and back to the pond. I thought that was the end of it but then Bill found them later in the day making another break for it. He's put up some duck barricades to stop them getting out through the bushes but a large drainage pipe leads from the end of a nearby ditch under the road. Let's hope they don't decide that their next big adventure will be to swim down the pipe.