Just don’t feed wild animals
What about feeding a wild thang
would a cat count as a wild animal
I would argue that cats aren’t exactly domesticated. More like tamed perhaps.
In my defense, the only time I gave ducks bread was one time a gang of them surrounded me. One started biting/pecking my toe while the other was jumping up snatching at the sandwich I was eating. It was ducking extortion!!
That’s fair, I’d probably throw the sandwich and run.
Idk I tried to feed ducks with some frozen peas, and those fuckers just spat them out.
Just like people, some like them, some don’t! I usually let them thaw first, so I’m not sure if they’d like them still frozen. Maybe that was a factor?
There’s these two identical swans at the local park named Tom & Jerry that have been there for years. One of them loves peas and will gobble them straight from your hand (if they know and trust you,) but the other one will go to eat whatever you’re giving them from your hand, see/smell that it’s peas, and their head flies back and they violently shakes their head like “NOPE!” It’s hilarious! I love those goobers.
i saw this problem with pigeons too, in the cities most of them are malnourished (diarrhea, which got better with seeds). If you ever go to the countryside you’ll see they have much better health. Next time i go to a city i’ll make sure to give corn or seeds to ducks as well!
Isn’t all bird excrement diarrhea? They excrete from a cloaca that is both feces and urine mixed, so it’s liquid.
From personal experience no. Also google gives me diarrea in pigeons as a symptom of disease, not as normal stuff
What about mealworms
Mealworms are the shit! It’s like my milkshake bringing all the birbs to my yard.
I keep seeing this but as far as I can tell the only study on the subject seems to show that it has no effect on their normal grazing patterns and that both domesticated and wild ducks heavily fed bread spend 90% of their time “naturally grazing”
https://absa.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Cor-Vol-35-Pg101_106-Ducks.pdf
It’s basically just duck junk food. https://www.uu.nl/en/background/what-to-feed-ducks-according-to-science Probably not an issue if they don’t get too much, and still get plenty of good quality food in. I’d still rather give them something good for them, but I’m glad it’s not as terrible as it seems.
Totally agree, it’s just that there is a lot of pearl clutching when it comes to this topic and we need a more balanced approach.
A little bit of bread is not going to hurt them, but maybe there are some other options that are better. But if they get fed some bread, probably don’t need to have an aggressive confrontation about it
You get little cans of peas that you can keep in your car in case of duck sightings
I would love to explain my Emergency Peas to people who saw them.
what if I feed them human flesh?
the ducks round here go wild for oats
cheap as hell tooas a treat, many ducks love blueberries! it shouldn’t be their main food though. I had a duck that would go wild for blueberries.
I thought the reason they say not to feed ducks bread was because they would get used it and flock to city centers.
Mainly they flock to bakeries. Once they’ve tried the artesianal stuff they come up with all kinds of crazy hijinks to get it. It’s really a nuisance.
“Ok that’s seven loaves of sourdough- Wait. I’m gonna need to see some ID.”
(Reasonable quacking sounds)
“Dang it. It’s ducks in a trench coat again. Third time today.”No bullshit, the local crows know when I’m baking sourdough now. They smell it, I guess, and they know that I’m a soft touch. I usually do little batches of “discard” pancakes, and share a few with them.
They have, however, decided that they will only visit the side yard because of our chicken. She rules the back yard, and they won’t fuck with her. So there’s this solid mass of iridescent black on that patch, just cawing and waiting until I open the damn window.
I like crows lol.
For a few years, I had a crow friend who liked to perch in the trees across the street. I would yell hello, and they would caw back. They were great, I always have them my food scraps. Stopped coming one day, and I really miss them. I hope they just found greener pastures somewhere.
Oh yeah, crows are survivors. If they moved away, it’s because something better drew them. They don’t abandon a solid resource without a damn good reason.
