A breakfast for ducks

NGO members hold such events every year in the frostiest moments of winter, when ducks find it hard to obtain food. The activists had to “hunt” for birds a little this year. Several dozen quacking ducks swam near the Venice Bridge in Hydropark on the previous day. Water froze at the bridge overnight, and the birds moved to a big airhole nearby.

The event’s participants brought several bags of warm crispy baguettes. They broke bread into large pieces and threw them into the water. Birds were in no hurry to feed, fearing human presence on the bank. “The quacks will eat everything, they are just waiting for us to leave,” Mykhailo Savchenko of the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center explained. “I feed ducks two or three times a month in winter, bringing bread or millet. Millet feeding is more demanding, though, as one has to spread grains in piles on the bank or on the ice. People see how our activists feed birds and join the helping drive.”

“What feed will sink will not be lost, for the fish will eat it,” head of the All-Ukrainian NGO “Living Planet” Svitlana Berzina remarked. “This winter has been generally a good one for both people and animals, but frosts did hit in February. Water bodies are now covered with ice, and animals are increasingly short of naturally obtained food. Being waterfowl and unable to exist without liquid water, ducks find it especially difficult to obtain food now.”

Kyiv ducks are now clinging to bridges and airholes in ice, coming close to people. Waterfowl have only algae and what they find on riverbanks to eat throughout winter. Berzina advises to feed white bread or crackers to quacks. “Ducks are the only waterfowl in Hydropark this winter, while past year, swans were present there as well,” Savchenko said. “Birds find it hard to survive the winter without supplementary feeding. With human help, though, everything is fine.”