Digital Extra

The duck, a male eider, was one of more than 100 that had been rescued from the midst of the spill nearly three weeks ago, its feathers soaked in diesel fuel, its future very much in doubt.

Like its feathered fellows -- loons, grebes, gulls, mergansers, other eiders and more -- the bird was brought by volunteer rescuers to a rehabilitation facility set up in the Narragansett town highway garage and run by Delaware-based Tri-State Bird Rescue.

There it underwent days of intensive, hands-on care, in which Tri-State workers and volunteers struggled to clean birds of the oil that had soiled not only their feathers, but their digestive and respiratory systems as well.

At the same time, the workers tried to keep the birds warm, calm and free of the land-based bacteria and viruses that many of the birds would never encounter in their home environment -- the sea.

It turned out to be an endeavor set squarely against the odds, as more than 80 percent of the birds gradually succumbed to a variety of ailments.

Just after noon yesterday, the eider found itself being transported from the town garage in a cardboard box by Lori Suprock, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Enviromental Management, and Dr. Susan Littlefield, the state veterinarian.

Their destination was Narrow River, just below Sprague Bridge, which appeared yesterday to be a most promising place for a duck to make a fresh start.

Under a sky of broken clouds, patchy with sunlight, Littlefield walked to the shore, set the cardboard box down and opened the top. With no prompting, the eider hopped from the box and waddled straight into the water.

Once wet, however, it seemed in no hurry to put distance between itself and its rescuers. Instead, it paddled at an idle against the outgoing tide, just a few feet from shore, looking one way and another, and often back at its human care-givers.

Then, as work crews 9 miles away struggled in vain to refloat the grounded Scandia, the tugboat that brought the North Cape to Rhode Island, the eider, having refloated itself, easily rode the gentle swells that pulsed through the water, its surroundings possibly looking familiar, its future looking ducky.