Colourful flock of super-sized ducks to land at Washington Wetland Centre for Easter

The 14 celebrity-designed Giant Dusty Ducks will be brightening up the wonderful wetlands from this Thursday, until Sunday April 15, encouraging people to explore our diverse 103-acre nature reserve as part of a family-friendly trail.

Visitors can pick up a trail leaflet on arrival and set off to find their favourite Dusty, before completing the trail questions to win a bag of Dusty Duck goodies!

The vibrant six foot ducks feature celebrity designs including: Chris Packham’s Ziggy StarDusty; Joanna Lumley’s Absolutely Fabulous Patsy Dusty; Justin Fletcher’s Pirate Justy Dusty; Steve Backshall’s Explorer Dusty; Kate Humble’s Camo Dusty; Michaela Strachan’s Springtime Dusty; Ellie Harrison’s (Countryfile) Astro Dusty and many more…

Chris Packham from BBC’s Springwatch series said: “As Vice President of WWT and a massive fan of the late, great David Bowie I’m very proud of Ziggy StarDusty – he’s a fine fellow.

“More importantly he and the other Dusty Ducks are an imaginative way to get the next generation engaged with nature and hopefully inspired to want to protect it for the future.”

Gill Pipes, WWT Washington’s centre manager, added: “We’re thrilled to welcome these colourful, larger-than-life Dusty Ducks to Washington – they look fantastic in amongst our real-life wildlife.

“We think that kids will love all the different wild and wacky designs and this is a great opportunity for them to get closer to nature while having fun.

“We also know that children who like exploring outdoors often grow up to be adults that love the outdoors, so through this event we’re hoping to gently building an interest that may help protect wetlands and the wildlife that depends on them for years to come.”

Original Dusty Duck was kindly designed exclusively for the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) by the world-famous Aardman studios, the studios behind Early Man, Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.

It took the team approximately two months to create Dusty Duck, six weeks to produce the giant fibreglass models and then eight weeks to paint the celebrity designs onto them – a process of more than five months in total.

Normal admission price applies during the event, WWT members go free. Save 10% on admissions by booking online: http://bit.ly/WashingtonTickets