They aren't everyone's cup of tea, but Coronation Street character Hilda Ogden would have been in her element.

Flying ducks - usually in threes, one always dipping earthwards - have become a cult collectable since they were first hung on the Rovers Return cleaner's wall in 1976.

Today more than 70 sets of flying ducks, swallows, geese and swifts go up for auction in Lewes at 10am.

The unusual collection took art teacher Carol Butler 20 years to amass but it lay untouched in her attic for a decade.

She decided it was time to part with her former obsessions when she moved from Brighton to Eastbourne.

Miss Butler, who teaches art at Hamilton Lodge School for Deaf Children in Brighton, said: "It's very difficult parting with a part of your past but I think they're best spread around, though I would have loved them to have been displayed together in one area."

Miss Butler's collection grew to include work by well-known artists like Clarice Cliff and sought-after earthenware company Beswick.

The whole collection could be worth up to £700 and some of the ornaments date from the Thirties and Fifties.

Miss Butler says she had to keep one simple, wooden set for herself and some blue painted birds for an aunt.

Nick Muston, group manager of Gorringes Auctioneers in Lewes, said: "Some of them are definitely like the ones Hilda Ogden had on her mural.

"There's plenty there for anybody who wants a flock of ducks or geese on their walls. There's a gaggle of geese, a flock of seagulls and a quack of ducks."