New Thing #29: Quack, Quack!

We returned from our camping trip at Detroit Lake and had some hamburger and hot dog buns that got squashed on the trip home. I decided to take them to a local park's creek and feed the ducks there. The last time I fed ducks was in high school in my home town--I've been hissed at and bit by a goose-- but for the most part, I enjoy the experience. The new thing today was I fed the Rock Creek ducks with bread I would have thrown away. Afterwards, I remember that animal-activists say it's bad to feed the ducks people food. So, I researched feeding wild ducks people food. I found some interesting things from the U.S. Geological survey. Here is the website http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/about/faqs/birds/feeding.htm

It stated that:
"Wild adult ducks and young ducklings eat lots of aquatic invertebrates during spring and summer (mostly aquatic insects like midge larvae, and mayfly, dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, etc.). These natural foods are particularly high in protein, which females need to produce eggs and ducklings need for rapid growth and survival. Foods like bread (even though sometimes enriched with protein) and grain are lower in protein than the foods ducks would eat naturally at this time of year. If you made ice cream and cookies readily available at all times to your own kids, they'd eat very little of the things that are better for them nutritionally. Although little research has been done on food limitation in waterfowl, there is no reason to believe that food, particularly protein, is limiting for ducks during the breeding and brood rearing seasons. All those bugs that are plastered to your windshield after a drive through the country in late evening are one of the main reasons ducks return to your area to nest each year. If you insist on feeding the ducks, visit your local feed store and buy a scientifically formulated poultry starter with a crude protein content of 27% or greater. Use this food until about mid-August, then switch to a food with a much higher carbohydrate content (wheat, barley, or corn, for example), because ducks start putting on fat for migration at that time."

So I don't feel so bad the ducks ate my bread because they could use the higher carb content this time of year.