Ducks Don’t Eat When It’s Not Sunny
I have a theory that ducks have developed the ability to draw nourishment from the very air when the sun is not shining brightly enough to entice folk to come throw them treats otherwise why else would people only go feeding them when it’s sunny?
Read on….
The park near me has a nice duck pond lake inhabited by a number of mallards (the baby mallards are out and about now! *squee*), Canadian Geese, not-so-canadian geese, some other as yet unidentified (by my at least) ducks and a few Moorhens.
Upon a sunny day you might find not one but two mobile ice cream establishments (one traditional one Mr Whippy), a toddlers play group and many many people. On a sunny day many folk dust off their shorts and their spare scraps of bread and announce unto their family “Behold for today the sun tis bright in the sky to yea to the park we shall attend and yea many-a-duck shall we feed”.
Now this is all very good and nice but there is a small problem – the number of hungry ducks is dwarfed by the number of eager bread-laden folk resulting in some rudimentary bread-beaches forming around the pond lake. The ducks devour what they fancy and, quite reasonably, leave the rest. But, I find myself pondering by the pond, with all this out pouring of desire to feed the ducks on this indeed sunny day what about in the colder nay more frozen times?
I can only conclude that ducks and geese and other such pond lake dwelling souls have developed a mystical ability to not require food below a certain ambient temperature! Amazing, I know. Otherwise why else would folk ignore the poor beakers on non-sunny days? I’ve been to the park on colder nay frozen days and have none the less found the duck folk to be terribly eager to accept bready treats – almost as if they were actually very hungry. That must not be the case though otherwise surely everyone would be out throwing them some tasty treats in less clement weather!
On that thought I may dig up some bread and head to the pond lake for the sun is taking a constitutional behind some clouds today and I suspect folk will be less keen to feed the the duck folk today ^__^