Nature Done Wright

   When I did a story for The Record on the piebald deer in Wyckoff last month, I also interviewed the director of the McFaul Environmental Center about leaving out food for deer in winter.

  In a nutshell, his advice was: "Bad idea."

  The story is on Page L-3 today, and here.

  By and large, feeding anything but backyard feeder birds — and then only appropriate food like seed and definitely not bread — is a bad idea, for the same basic reasons as Pete Both of McFaul discusses in the interview.

   Feeding ducks and Canada geese is a particularly bad idea, as anyone who has tried to walk to the Warden’s Watch in late spring knows all to well.

   As a would-be photographer, I am not happy when ducks fly away as approach the warden’s Watch. But I am even unhappier when the ducks (or geese) start swimming toward me. It can only mean that somebody is feeding them

   People who feed wildlife invariably mean well, and their hearts are in the right place. But in the long run they aren’t doing anybody — including wildlife — any favors.