Bread is off the menu – so what should we feed the ducks now?

It’s not just a canard. The Canal and River Trust’s campaign to stop people feeding ducks bread is working – with the organisation reporting a reduction of about 80,000 loaves being chucked in the water in the past 12 months. This is good because bread leads to overpopulation, spreads disease if it’s left uneaten, attract rats and lets the birds binge eat and get ill instead of eating healthy things such as worms.

Organisations such as the Canal and River Trust offer suggestions as to what we should feed waterfowl instead of a stale slice of Warburtons Toastie. So we decided to put on a tasting menu. Armed with a shopping list of recommended foods, including sweetcorn, grapes and seeds, I got what I could and headed to the canal next to Guardian HQ to see what the local community of mallards, coots and canada geese would make of a smorgasbord worthy of, er, Nigella Lawswan. Here’s the birds’ verdict …

Grapes (seedless, halved)

My presence on the canal with a noisy bag of Waitrose Essential kale brought me quickly to the attention of a local mallard. I chucked him a grape, but the splash of it landing scared the poor blighter and as the fruit swiftly sank, the mallard quickly ducked off, uninterested. However, the splash came to the attention of a pair of canada geese who scoffed a handful quicker than you can say petit chablis.

(All scores out of five)
Floatability: 0
Duck score: 0
Goose score: 4

Kale

I figured, these being north-London ducks with a home next to the Guardian, that they’d be a bit sniffy about iceberg lettuce. As an alternative, a US website for duck enthusiasts recommended human superfood kale. If it’s good enough for Gwyneth … Alas, the mallards (and the stray coot that had joined us) turned their beaks up at the drifting cabbage. Tough crowd. The geese, however, were so keen they, started grabbing it from my hands.

Floatability: 5
Duck score: 0
Goose score: 3

Tinned sweetcorn

Even my ultra-fussy son will eat sweetcorn. So surely these snobby ducks will bite? And they do. A bit. Despite looking at me with the kind of haughty disdain a member of the Bullingdon Club might have for an Oxfordshire pub landlord, they do eat some. Just as long as I throw it right in front of the mallards’ beaks. God forbid they would have to dive down to catch them. The geese, meanwhile, fish them out like elegantly necked Pac-Men.

Floatability: 1
Duck score: 2
Goose score: 5

Sunflower seeds

At last, a hit with the ducks. After a quick call to the RSPB to check that sunflowers seeds were acceptable (“absolutely fine!”), I start to chuck them into the canal. The geese love it – though at this point I could probably start throwing petrol bombs in and they would eat them – and, lo!, even the mallards come chasing back to pick the seeds up before they sink. Quacked it.

Floatability: 2
Duck score: 5
Goose score: 5

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