Ecosystem ripple effect: Killing ducks, one loaf at a time?

What started out as an innocent trip a local park a half-decade ago became a learning experience.
For lunch, the ducks and geese of Middleburg were eating leftover bread from my pantry. For supper, I was eating humble pie.
It all began that morning. One of my then 3-year-old daughter’s favorite pastimes was to visit the duck pond in Middleburg and interact with the waterfowl. The weather was beautiful and the bread ends and stale hotdog buns were taking over one shelf in our pantry back home. It all added up to an inevitable waterside expedition.

At the pond, the ducks and geese greeted us with open beaks … to be exact, 63 open beaks — from big ones (Canada geese) to small ones (baby Mallard ducks). It was as if my daughter and I were mobbed by some waterfowl version of the paparazzi. Even a few large carp decided to join in the hunt for stray bread crumbs.
Throughout this barrage of feathers and webbed feet, my daughter was in her own little world. She talked to the ducks as if they were her best friends. She would squat down near a duck, drop a few bread crumbs, and then coach the bird through its meal. When a duck waddled over and missed out on a flying hoagie roll or piece of whole wheat, my daughter made sure it didn’t feel left out for long.
Her interactions with the birds were priceless. A goose honked. A duck quacked. My daughter giggled. I laughed. Sharing a moment on a beautiful day in the outdoors. It was a neat experience, and I decided to write a small outdoors column about the experience.
To get the blood pumping and creative juices flowing before hitting the keyboard, I decided to search the internet for similar feel-good stories of little kids feeding ducks. I figured it would help channel me into the proper, cutesy frame of mind the story deserved.

I went to the search engine and typed in, “feeding ducks bread.”
The first result was a Yahoo! Answers question asking: I have some home-raised ducks. What can I feed them other than worms? They don’t seem to like bread or corn.
The answer: Never feed ducks bread!
Why couldn’t you feed ducks bread?
The Yahoo! response continued, “Another reason to restrain from feeding ducks is that although ducks seem to love bread, it is not nutritious. White bread in particular is made from refined flour and is not proper for avian nutrition. Many ducks suffer from degenerative liver disease because they eat too much. Also, leftover bread and duck droppings pollute the water. The uneaten bread turns into a deadly mold called Aspergillus, which is fatal to ducks, fish and other animals. Rotting bread can also fester other deadly diseases and parasites, particularly duck virus Enteritis, which with a single outbreak will kill all the ducks of that area. Duck droppings can also breed diseases such as Avian Botulism and a parasite that causes swimmers’ itch. Feeding ducks bread is like feeding dogs chocolate. They may seem to like it, but in the end it does more harm than good.”
At first, I was annoyed by this.
Go ahead, take away my ability to throw rice at a wedding (allegedly the dry rice swells in small birds’ abdomens and causes major issues) and to release helium balloons into the air (whales and other animals could choke on the balloon fragments), but feeding leftover bread to ducks is like watching football on Thanksgiving. You don’t mess with an American tradition.
So, I decided to forget the first post of my search — to write it off as some sort of ecological over-reaction — and checked out the next one. And then the next one, and the next one. I began to notice a trend.
Perhaps feeding ducks bread isn’t a smart thing to do.
It seems that Butterkrust bread is to ducks as Butterscotch Krimpets are to people.
Some more ‘Web wisdom’ included, “When wild ducks are fed human foods, their organs become engorged and fatty on the inside and they quickly die from malnutrition, heart disease, liver problems and other health complications. An overfed, malnutritioned duck is sluggish and can’t escape from predators. Feeding wild ducks adversely affects natural migration patterns, which are critical for their ongoing survival.”
In the Gloucestershire town of Newent, the town council passed a law in 2004 banning people from feeding bread to ducks. Since then, numerous other towns in England, Canada, the U.S. and additional countries followed suit.
The New Canaan (Connecticut) Nature Center warns that, “Feeding bread to ducks and geese is the equivalent of feeding your child nothing but candy. Ducks and geese like bread, and will clamor for it much like a child will ask for candy. But bread has no nutritional value for waterfowl.”
The center also warns that feeding ducks bread will ultimately lead to overcrowding on ponds. I wonder if 63 ducks/geese would be considered overcrowding on the Middleburg pond? I would assume so.
The bottom line is that in order to help waterfowl around the Valley, we all need to be flexible enough to make changes, ruffled feathers or not.