Moldy Food

News is that the DEC is telling people not to feed ducks and geese. I have fed my share of waterfowl, especially when I was young. I always felt slightly anxious about it though because it seemed weird to feed wild animals bread from a bag. And normally we fed the birds bread that we didn't want anymore, translation- moldy bread. I used to convince myself that moldy bread was fine, kind of like feeding them penicillin/antibiotics (after all Alexander Fleming saw the Penicillium mold destroy bacteria on his petri dish), and that can't hurt them, it might even help them...? Nope. And now I have a scientific reason to back up my anxiety. Apparently moldy food causes aspergillosis, which, according to the DEC website is "...a fungus that grows in the birds' lungs and air sacs causing respiratory distress and, eventually, suffocation." So that isn't a good way to die. Not that there is a good way to die. Same goes for moldy cracked corn and anything else moldy you might feel compelled to feed birds. They can find enough non-moldy food on their own, even through the winter, to make it just fine without the "treats" we throw their way.

Days like today, when the temperature drops and the snow starts falling, you wonder how birds make it at all. Some don't. But most hunker down and fluff up their downy underfeathers and wait. I think that is what I am going to do tonight, except I will start a fire in the woodstove, grab a book and relax. And I'll try not to eat moldy bread.