Not to be a buzz kill, but shouldn’t we not be feeding wild animals anything?
Usually directly feeding animals is looked down upon because decreasing their fear of humans tends to be a negative for their survival, and it might impact their ability to forage for their own food. With birds specifically, though, putting up feeders is more mixed. Migration takes an enormous amount of energy and and human sprawl has removed a lot of natural food sources. And especially in wintertime, food can be quite scarce for birds. But at the same time bird feeders can actually be big spreaders of disease and I know that there was guidance that people should take down feeders at the height of bird flu.
Now when it comes to mallards, they’re honestly a species that is incredibly urbanized already, so I don’t think directly feeding them is doing a great deal of harm.
There are signs by me that say not to feed migratory species in winter I believe. I presume the food makes them stick around when they would otherwise migrate.
Give peas a chance
Peas were always an option.
We come in Peas
Gross
Peas is not an option anymore
I tried feeding frozen peas to ducks in a pond near me. The peas mostly sank below the water immediately, and the ducks didn’t seem to care for them anyways. A few of them came over to investigate and weren’t interested after checking them out. I might’ve been doing it wrong, or maybe the ducks just were just too used to getting fed bread.
My local swan goes nuts for peas but eats out of my hand and they’re all bread spoiled
