It’s always tempting, when visiting a pond or waterway, to take along a bag of stale bread to feed the ducks. It’s good fun seeing ducks fly in from all directions to dive and squabble over the bread.

But is it always a good thing?

Kay Holder, the Council’s regional parks team manager, says no. Although duck feeding is an important pastime for many city people — a part of urban culture — there are places where it can do harm.

Feeding ducks, she says, changes their natural behaviour, upsets ecosystems, and may drive away other more shy native birds like shovelers, grey teal, cormorants, herons and kingfishers.

She wants people to think about only feeding the ducks in what she calls appropriate places.

The Botanic Gardens, Victoria Lake, Mona Vale and urbanised stretches of the Avon and Heathcote rivers, she says, are appropriate places to fling the bread about.

“Examples of inappropriate sites are natural ponds and waterways where we’re trying to restore or enhance habitats and encourage bird communities dominated by native species,” she says.

Travis Wetland, the Styx Mill Basin ponds, Wigram East Retention Basin and Janet Stewart Reserve are the kinds of places she thinks will not benefit from duck feeding.

“At these sites we really need to be trying to encourage the emergence of a birdlife community that involves a wide range of species, with the population of each being in balance with the environment,” Ms Holder says.

“Rather than having a waterway dominated by one or two species, we should be supporting a wide variety of bird species, occupying a wide range of niches and contributing to a healthy and fully functioning waterway ecosystem.”