Last week, we looked at how bread can be harmful or fatal to ducks and geese. Wild birdseed is a healthier option – but the best choice you can make for these birds is not to feed them at all.

“Feeding them changes their natural behavior and makes them more dependent on humans,” says Michael Kaufman, Farm and Wildlife Director of Green Chimneys in Brewster, New York, which provides animal-assisted therapy and activities for special needs children. This dependency causes multiple problems. The birds tend to lose their fear of people. This not only makes them more aggressive (geese

We know, by now, that we’re not supposed to feed wild waterfowl – there are plenty of signs in our parks reminding us of that – and we think we know why. It’s not good, for many reasons, for wild animals to become dependent on humans for handouts.

Still, every time we read about an elderly woman fined for throwing breadcrumbs to ducks or geese, we tend to take her side. After all, what harm does it do the birds? Is the occasional scrap of bread any worse for them than the occasional order of French fries is for us?

Unfortunately, yes.

Soon after moving to the Pacific Northwest, I began noticing some very striking electric-blue birds with crests. They turned out to be Steller’s jays (Cyanocitta stelleri, if you want to get official). Though they share a name, a family, and a silhouette with the better-known blue jay, there’s no mistaking one for the other. I had trouble thinking of them as “jays” at all.

The original Steller was an 18th-century German scientist who sailed to Alaska with the Russian explorer Vitus Bering. He was the first European to document several animals, which later got names like Steller’s Sea Cow, Steller’s Sea