These lessons are for the birds

Alex Coolman

COSTA MESA -- It doesn’t take much to be satisfied on a good summer

afternoon.

At TeWinkle Park, in fact, it requires little more than a fistful of

hot dog buns.

That’s what Nayely Moralez, 8, and her sister Michelle, 5, have

learned over the course of this summer, which they’ve filled with regular

trips to the park to feed the ducks and swans.

On a recent afternoon, as their mother Graciela looked on, the Costa

Mesa youth practiced the techniques they have learned through their long

exposure to the quacking creatures: throw big chunks to the swans, little

nibbles to the ducks, and try not to let your fingers get nipped.

But across the lake at the park, the Moralez sisters had some serious

competition. Six-year-old Christian Groeneneyk was giving a sort of

duck-feeding clinic, delving into the real nuances of the art and

illuminating the technical issues that many amateurs overlook.

Christian held a plastic bag full of stale bread, and he scattered it

as he scattered his wisdom before an appreciative, honking audience.

“If they fight,” he asserted, “don’t spank them or try to stop them.

Then they’ll be scared of you and you won’t be able to feed them.”

This was just one of the fine points the youth had acquired in his

feeding apprenticeship.

Also important to realize, he said, is that you can feed ducks

peanuts, but only if you take the shells off; you can’t move around too

much or you’ll scare the ducks; and if you throw cracked corn in the

water, it will probably sink before it reaches the beaks for which it’s

intended.

“It’s not hard to become an expert,” Christian explained. “You just

learn it from your mother.”

That instructor -- Santa Ana resident Robin Brown -- sat up on the

hillside as her son pursued his research at the lake. In a plastic

bucket, she had cracked corn, scraps of pancakes, muffins and the heels

of various bread loaves. This, she said, was a result of perhaps the most

important duck-feeding secret of all.

“He’s got a mother who bakes,” Brown said.