Ornithologist agree - it's not for the birds!

The other day, I was sitting by the water watching some ducks diving for bugs and playing together and I was upset with myself for not planning ahead a bit and bringing along some bread crumbs with which to feed them. Nothing’s more adorable than having a baby duck eat out of the palm of your hand, and if there is something more adorable than that please -- tell me now!

But my partner turned to me and said “No, you shouldn’t feed the birds anyway.” I thought about it quietly for a while — did he mean that because he didn’t want us to be bombarded by hungry birds? Or is there a bigger underlying reason why I shouldn’t be feeding the birds? I’ve got a hazy recollection of hearing some environmental fact on TV when I was a kid about how feeding animals in the winter discourages them from finding their own food and causes them to lose their hunting instincts. But is that right? I wasn’t sure, so I looked into it.

According to some ornithologists:

Many birders were first introduced to the joys of avian wildlife by feeding ducks bread at a local park or pond. While we may have grown up thinking this was an environmentally responsible and humane way to dispose of old or stale bread, feeding the ducks is actually unhealthy and potentially dangerous for the birds.

Some of the key points they bring up are:

• Bread (and other foods like it) are high in carbs and don’t have much nutritional value at all. You’re feeding them junk food! While it’s not super harmful for them – in moderation – it’s not great for them either. You’ll fatten them up and make it harder for them to fly and escape predators. Feeding bread to ducklings can stunt their growth — no nutrients! By giving bread to ducklings you’re not helping to teach them to forage for themselves.


• Uneaten bread can mold and rot and create noxious odors. It can also lead to greater algae growth and clog natural waterways. Bad for fish and everything else that lives there! Moldy bread can also cause asperigillosis (a fatal lung infection) that can kill ducks. Rotting food also attracts pests like rats, mice, and insects.


• Feeding ducks bread causes them to… well, what happens to you when you eat a lot of carb-rich foods, huh? Bird feces is full of bacteria and bacteria leads to disease.


• And finally, my initial instinct wasn’t so far off — ducks used to handouts may lose their natural fear of humans and become more aggressive in order to get more handouts. Lose of fear might not lead to huge duck armies trying to take over the world, but it might lead to ducks wandering out into busy traffic to get at picknickers. And why migrate if you’re sure that there will be someone to feed you right where you are?

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Bambi Blue is a freelance writer, editor, and codemonkey living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She moonlights as a jazz musician, a social butterfly, and most apparently a weisenheimer. Loves to cook, hates to clean, and can easily be found on Twitter.