The mallards loitering in a midtown Anchorage park pond were quacking contentedly. Someone had poured half a bushel of cracked corn on the ice around an unfamiliar wooden structure. Corn is so much more tasty and nutritious than their usual winter fare: stale white bread. Winter doesn't get much better than this.
Then the trap doors slammed shut. More than 600 ducks erupted into the air. The 36 ducks that didn't fly had just volunteered to participate in a study of urban ducks in Anchorage.
Park ducks
Wild ducks are migratory birds. Most of the mallards that breed, nest, and rear their young in Alaska fly south for winter. Mallards that summer in the Cook Inlet watershed of Southcentral Alaska overwinter in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and California.
But mallards are adaptable. Thousands overwinter in Kachemak Bay and Prince William Sound, for instance. And thousands more have learned to survive winters in open water even farther north, in locations where they can survive only if people keep bringing them food -- urban areas like Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Park ducks. You won't find that genus and species listed in your favorite field guide to birds. H. W. Heusmann defined the term in a study of ducks residing in urban parks in Massachusetts in the 1970s. A "park duck" spends some part of the day during some part of the year in close proximity to humans to gain access to unnatural foods. Reliance on human handouts is the most important distinction between a park duck and a wild duck. A park duck may frequent public or private property in urban, suburban or rural settings, and it can revert to wild behavior when it isn't waiting for its next handout. Most park ducks are mallards, an adaptable species that quickly learns to tolerate people.
The Anchorage Audubon Society conducts an area-wide bird count in late December each year. Last December they found 726 mallards in the city. Previous efforts have counted as many as 3,351 mallards. The Audubon counts are probably conservative. Mike Petrula, a waterfowl research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, counted 1,032 mallards on the pond in Cuddy Family Park last week.
Petrula is attempting to understand the whys and wherefores of ducks, primarily mallards, that choose to linger in Anchorage all winter.
His first order of business is to capture and identify individual ducks that can be monitored the remainder of this winter and in subsequent years. Last Monday, Petrula and two assistants, Kyle Smith and Wade Schrock, found their ice-bound trap in Cuddy Family Park, in midtown Anchorage, full of birds. They triggered the trapdoors remotely, capturing 36 mallards. Recording the sex and weight of each bird, they also affixed a standard Fish and Wildlife Service aluminum band on one leg and a red plastic band with large white numbers on the other leg. The easily visible red bands will allow the biologists and others to record locations and status of individual mallards without recapturing them each time.
Petrula captured an additional 51 mallards a few days later, so he's well on the way to his goal to capture several hundred ducks this winter, enough to map the distribution of park ducks around Anchorage. He'd like to know if wintering mallards move about town, from park to park, or spend time feeding in more natural areas. Do the same mallards queue up for handouts every winter, or will some of the mallards living in Anchorage this winter fly south next fall? Where do the females nest?
Petrula also plans to take blood samples to investigate the prevalence of diseases, and he hopes use stable isotope analysis to determine how much of their food is marine-based compared to other sources. Park ducks in other cities are known to make nightly flights to natural feeding areas, like the tide flats surrounding Anchorage. Nevertheless, this time of year most food in the "other" category is likely to be bread.
A guilty pleasure
While Petrula and his assistants were hunched over the ducks they were handling, an intermittent parade of duck feeders was pulling into the parking lot, emptying sacks full of bread and driving off. Some of them studiously avoided making eye contact with the biologists.
By now, most people know biologists don't approve of feeding bread to ducks. But it's a guilty pleasure that verges on obsession.
More than 52 million Americans feed wild birds and other wild animals around their homes. We feed wild animals because we like to see them up close and because we think they are hungry, perhaps starving. But beyond those reasons the human race seems to have a deeply rooted desire to interact personally with animals -- to look them in the eye, to feel some level of trust -- and feeding wild animals scratches that itch.
Most wildlife agencies discourage feeding wildlife. It's illegal in Alaska to feed some wild animals -- for example, bears, wolves and moose -- because feeding can make them more dangerous. Birds are an exception to the rule. Bird feeding is believed to benefit humans, chiefly by establishing and maintaining a connection with nature. Some researchers believe feeding birds promotes mental health.
But there is an exception to the exception. Although feeding songbirds is encouraged because it is believed to do less harm than good, most experts discourage feeding waterfowl. Feeding creates park ducks. It allows them to skip the rigors of migration and remain in northern climes.
If everyone stopped feeding ducks today in Anchorage they wouldn't starve to death. It would only take mallards a few hours to join their wild brethren in Prince William Sound or Kachemak Bay. The hours of standing web-footed on ice, the pitiful mass scramble towards each arriving vehicle, the jostling to be first in the queue are all an illusion created by some of the world's most accomplished moochers.
Feeding ducks creates a concentration of ducks, which attracts more feeders and food. It's a classic example of a feedback loop. Several researchers have concluded that the density and abundance of wintering mallards in urban areas depends primarily on the availability of feeding sites and intensity of feeding.
Feeding encourages wild birds to become dependent on human foods. Because unfrozen water bodies are scarce in northern latitudes in winter, feeding concentrates large numbers of ducks, which lowers water quality and facilitates the transmission of diseases such as botulism, avian cholera, duck plague, aspergillosis, and salmonellosis. Some of these diseases can be carried from duck feeding sites to bird feeders in your backyard by pigeons, crows and magpies.
The advice of experts doesn't seem matter. People feed waterfowl no matter what they are told. Like addicts, many of those who feed birds feed their habit frequently -- and all year long.
As the biologists were packing up to leave, a woman stood on the other side of the parking lot tossing bread slices over a tall chain-link fence. More than a hundred ducks had responded on cue by flying over the fence. They were pouncing on the bread, fighting for each slice like they were famished. I sidled over to take some photos. The woman asked if I was with Fish and Game. "Not any more," I said. "I'm retired." She told me she had purchased four loaves of sliced bread for the ducks from Franz Bakery on Spenard Road for $5. The bakery had thrown in a fifth loaf as a bonus. Then she nodded at the ducks scrambling around her feet. "They're starving," she said. "I don't think anybody's feeding them."
The all-bread diet
For decades the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has been trying to convince people to stop feeding ducks and geese in Anchorage. Most waterfowl biologists will tell you that feeding ducks is not good for them, particularly in winter. Hundreds or thousands of ducks confined to small bodies of water can pass diseases to one another, which sometimes results in mass die-offs. The most common food provided by people -- bread -- is not particularly nutritious. Ever hear of the all-bread diet? I didn't think so.
But bread is what many people think ducks eat, and moochers can't afford to be too choosy. Bread is also easily digested and a relatively high-energy food. A little bit won't hurt them. The problem is, nearly everybody feeds them bread.
A few conscientious duck feeders provide more expensive foods -- bird seed, cracked corn or domestic animal chow -- but don't let that fool you. Heusmann estimated that 38,500 people who visited six park ponds in Massachusetts during a three-week period left nearly four tons of food for the ducks. Bread accounted for 84 percent of the food by weight; however, his definition of bread was narrow and didn't include crackers, doughnuts and other cereal foods. Similar quantities of junk foods are on the menu in Anchorage.
Compulsive feeding of wild animals may be related to animal hoarding, and hoarding is a symptom of a mental disorder. Gary Patronek, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University, defined animal hoarding as the "pathological human behavior that involves a compulsive need to obtain and control animals, coupled with a failure to recognize their suffering." That sounds an awful lot like the obsessive and chronic feeding of ducks by some individuals.
Not everyone who feeds a duck is obsessed or clinically compulsive, of course. Yet many people truly believe their web-footed friends would starve to death without their assistance. Animal hoarders express the same concern for the scores of cats or parakeets living in squalor in their home. I've known people who feed feral pigeons -- a related affliction -- who are unable to curtail feeding "their" birds under threat of a $310 citation. Here's a reality check. Even one of the most strident animal-rights organizations, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), considers compulsive feeding harmful to ducks.
Perhaps Petrula's research will highlight the predominance of bread in the diet of Anchorage's park ducks. He may find a high incidence of disease related to overcrowded conditions. He might observe greater mortality in park ducks than in wild ducks that could conceivably be traced back to their poor diet and disease-ridden living conditions. Any or all of these findings might convince a few people not to feed ducks. Alternatively, Petrula might find that Anchorage's park mallards are doing fine, and Franz Bakery can keep churning out loaves of sliced white bread to sell to people who cannot resist the urge to feed ducks.
Columnist Rick Sinnott is a former Anchorage-area biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Contact him at rickjsinnott(at)gmail.com.