Instructions for Feeding Ducklings

Further evidence of my boundless capacity for being cross

 

Some dear little ducklings have been coming along the river behind the house here and cheeping in a most weedy manner to ask for food. Utterly charmed, we responded to their pleas with enthusiastic benevolence - "Feast, my Pretties!" we cried - and indeed we felt flattered at their obvious devotion to our patch of river. Horrid great seagulls and rooks, no doubt equally needy and deserving, gathered to glower over the scene but we scared them empty away. WE feed only the fluffy, the endearing.

Endearing fluffy ducklings ready for feeding. Seagulls are neither fluffy nor endearing and get no bready morsels.

 

But now our neighbour, a kindly and thoughtful person, has ruined everything with her superior feeding methods. Whereas we pelt the ducklings with big bits of rock-hard stale crust, Mrs Nextdoor buys for them soft, fresh bread containing nourishing and tasty seeds. She cuts the crusts off and crumbles the bread into micro-pieces in order to present it in a beak-friendly format, and then delivers it just upstream from the ducklings so they can pick it up as it floats down to them.
She has enticed them away, and since then the duck family have naturally spurned our offerings and only visit us if there's no-one in next door.  

Ungrateful Mother Duck leading her family of QUISLINGS off to get the baby-compatible bread treats from next door

  

 

Right. Well, here you are, Rooks and Seagulls! Have some of this premium ciabatta and costly sourdough, this exotic couscous, these grains of choicest expenso-rice! Gorge upon these hand-picked flakes of wild salmon, these slices of fillet beef, this asparagus! Eat! Leave nothing for the thankless ducklings. Let us teach them the consequence of their folly.