{"id":3451,"date":"2019-10-18T06:56:26","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T05:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/?p=3451"},"modified":"2019-10-18T06:56:28","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T05:56:28","slug":"should-you-feed-bread-to-ducks-and-swans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/18\/should-you-feed-bread-to-ducks-and-swans\/","title":{"rendered":"Should You Feed Bread To Ducks and Swans?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The country seems to have lost it&#8217;s shit over this photo of a poster that appeared on social media this week. Let&#8217;s look at the facts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1) The &#8220;Ban the Bread&#8221; campaign was originally launched by WildThings, a company that, guess what, sells bird food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2) Before the Ban the Bread campaign, I don&#8217;t recall ever hearing about an overweight duck or swan that had died of malnutrition after eating an excess of bread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3) Bread of any kind is not a natural diet for ducks or swans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4) Swans in particular (don&#8217;t know about ducks) are now dying of starvation, and some swans today are underweight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5) The Queen&#8217;s own Swan Marker David Barker has weighed in, supporting the occasional feeding of bread to swans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have a culture of taking the kids to feed bread to the ducks and swans in this country, and that has likely created a situation where their population is greater than the natural food found in the waterways will support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"272\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Band-The-Bread-300x272.jpg\" alt=\"Ban the Bread Campaign by WildThings\" class=\"wp-image-3454\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Band-The-Bread-300x272.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Band-The-Bread-768x697.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Band-The-Bread.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that people are reticent, it seems clear to me that the Ban the Bread campaign, whilst very well intentioned (and I&#8217;m sure not at all motivated by a hope for increased sales!) has caused real harm to the swans, and likely ducks too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes in an ideal world, everyone would switch to more appropriate bird food, but realistically that&#8217;s not going to happen, and clearly isn&#8217;t happening. I myself had an unwanted 1\/2 loaf of bread this very week&#8230; it went in the bin rather than go to the local swans. I think on only 3 occasions in my daughter&#8217;s 18 year upbringing did we ever go to &#8220;feed the ducks&#8221; with some left over bread, it was hardly a regular thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Swan-Starved-to-Death-e1571377941437-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Swan that starved to death\" class=\"wp-image-3455\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Swan-Starved-to-Death-e1571377941437-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Swan-Starved-to-Death-e1571377941437.jpg 709w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>So either we continue to not feed bread, and suffer a population readjustment (read: mass deaths from starvation) until the population of ducks and swans reduces to a level nature can support, or we ditch the Ban the Bread idea, and go back to occasional bread feeding (proper feed preferred of course) and the joy that brings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The country seems to have lost it&#8217;s shit over this photo of a poster that appeared on social media this week. Let&#8217;s look at the facts: 1) The &#8220;Ban the Bread&#8221; campaign was originally launched by WildThings, a company that, guess what, sells bird food. 2) Before the Ban the Bread campaign, I don&#8217;t recall [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[394],"class_list":{"0":"post-3451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-bread"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3451"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3457,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions\/3457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}