Feeding ducks and swans bread has been frowned upon by campaigners and wildlife lovers in the past few years as a diet of just bread can cause malnutrition.
This has meant fewer and fewer people have been taking a peaceful walk to the park with stale bread to throw in the water to feed the ducks and swans.
Due to the dramatic drop in people feeding ducks bread, birds are starving as people don’t feed them at all anymore.
Posters have started appearing in parks up and down the country, exclaiming: “It’s OK to feed us bread!”
The posters read: “Please feed us again, especially in the winter! Everyone has stopped feeding us because they think bread will make us poorly and now some of us are dying of starvation without your bread.
“Yes, it’s not the healthiest for us but nothing in our bellies will kill us!”
The Royal Society for the protection of Birds confirm that ducks and swans need a varied diet, however small amounts of bread won’t hurt them:
“Just like us, birds need a varied diet to stay healthy. Although ducks, swans and geese can digest all types of bread, too much can leave them feeling full without giving them all of the important vitamins, minerals and nutrients they need.
“So, although bread isn’t harmful our advice is to only feed small amounts to birds. We encourage people to use things like sweetcorn, porridge oats and defrosted frozen peas as well as bird seed.”
The ‘Bin the Bread’ campaign launched by charity Swan Lifeline said that bread was bad for swans, however the Queen’s official swan keeper David Barber said there is “no good reason” not to feed swans bread.
Mr Barber continued: “Please if you’ve always fed bread please do not stop, it is better than nothing.”
