Mother and Ducklings in the Springtime Food Hunt
If you’re out visiting your favorite park or lake and happen to see a mother duck and her ducklings coming your way, be sure not to kill them with kindness! Familiar with human habits such as dumping out bags of popcorn, cereal and bread for them to eat, these birds of the wilds might come right up to you and look at you with their big brown eyes as if to say, “Feed me.” Don’t do it! When you feed them your human scraps you’re actually hurting, not helping them.
Sometimes nature’s favors come in the form of restraint. Yesterday we posted a story about the Marine Mammal Care Center where seals and sea lions are never named and interaction is kept to a minimum. Why? It can lead to attachment and eventually cost the animals their lives as they are re-introduced back into their natural habitats. The same goes with healthy ducks. By feeding them people food you can inadvertently poison them and their water supplies. Old food that flows into local lakes can become an incubator for botulism that poisons and kills the ducks. Be a good friend by watching them but not feeding the ducks.
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