Category Archives: Essays

Two Mallard drakes

The next time you tear off a piece of white bread and pop it into a duck’s beak at the McKinley Park pond remember that ducks and geese in the wild feed on large amounts of protein, greens and unprocessed grains. Worms, crustaceans, grasses and vegetables––not processed breads, cookies or candy.

The ubiquitous duck has a cosmopolitan distribution and is often a young city dweller’s introduction to wildlife. Watching a little one feeding ducks never loses its charm.

So how to keep the ducks healthy and give kids the wildlife interaction that feeding provides?

Here are some tips to keep the feeding fun and the ducks healthy:

1. Don’t overfeed. Take a small bag of treats.
2. Explain to the kids that the ducks are on a special diet to help them stay healthy.
3. Feed dark, leafy greens (not iceberg lettuce), some corn, carrots, and peas for extra treats.
4. Western Feed carries fowl scratch and corn. This commercial food is nutritionally designed for birds. Pellets and crumble can be found at other stores.
5. You can make small feed balls with brown rice, hardboiled eggs and greens.
6. Avoid feeding goslings or ducklings.

Misfeeding waterfowl has heartbreaking consequences. Wings of baby fowl can become deformed from a processed-carbohydrate diet. The unusual deformity called ‘angel wing’ can be a symptom. Adults can also become sick if the bread gets stuck in their crops.

Angle wing on goose

Some day the city might be able to afford pay-to-feed stations with healthy food. Until then, feed the McKinley duck sparingly with nutritious food and enjoy the wonderful park.

The No Smoking mural on the Ferry family wall ledge, painted by artist Robert Gordon, has elicited approving comment from passersby and apparently deterred Mercy Hospital smokers who don’t want to be seen sitting on the wall, puffing away.  “I saw the artist painting that,” says Clarence Summerfield of 43rd street. “It’s beautiful, and for someone who doesn’t smoke it’s a really big health issue.” ESP’s photo essay about the mural was followed by a feature article in the Sacramento Bee (Our Region, Thursday, July 26). Now, says Jim Ferry, smokers stand in clusters and “smoke near the driveway.”  It’s as if the Ferrys are slowly inching the smokers back to Mercy property.

Conceived by Joanie Ferry, the mural idea generated  a lot of neighborhood buzz, most of it overwhelmingly positive.  “It’s a great use of art for private and public good,” says neighbor Eileen Lynch. She adds that she follows the Ferry struggle with the Mercy Corporation on Jim Ferry’s blog (Living Next to Mercy).

Artist Gordon, who worked in part from idea sketches submitted by the Ferrys, will continue to work on the wall, and will next paint a a “No Truck Zone” mural on the Ferry’s garage which faces the Mercy parking lot. This zone had been exploited by Mercy vehicles that send idling exhaust and fumes onto Ferry property.

“Neighbors shouldn’t have to breathe these toxins,” says Lynch. “It’s why so many of us end up in hospitals in the first place. Kudos to the Ferrys.”