While many Australians delight in feeding their neighbourhood birds, wildlife experts warn people could be killing them with “kindness”.

Many Facebook groups are littered with photos of people feeding meat to their “feathered friends”, and frustrated wildlife carer Simon Adamczyk has issued a plea for people to stop.

“I was really shocked by how many people fed magpies mince just by itself,” he told Yahoo News Australia.

View photos A kookaburra is hand fed plain mince. Source: Michelle Smith More

Last year, the South Australian wildlife expert treated 25 birds suffering from illnesses he could see were directly linked to well-meaning people feeding them what is “essentially junk food”.

Mr Adamczyk compared feeding a magpie 50 grams of mince meat to a human eating two hamburgers and two servings of fries.

“People think they’re doing the right thing, but they really are just malnourishing these animals,” he said.

View photos Casper was brought into care sick and malnourished. Source: Simon Adamczyk More

‘Generous’ act cuts short the lives of Squeak and Casper

After 17 years working with wildlife, Mr Adamczyk has seen a lot of pain and suffering, but it was the preventable deaths of two young magpies he named Squeak and Casper that broke his heart, and motivated him to speak out.

His first step was to post images online of the two young birds who he says became sick due to poor diet.

“To get the impact across you have to show them something graphic,” he said.

“It’s not really the nice way of doing it, putting up an image (on social media) of an animal suffering.”

View photos Squeak and Caspar became sick from eating the wrong diet. Source: Simon Adamczyk More

Juvenile magpies, Squeak and Casper, were both gravely ill when they were surrendered, and the kindest thing Mr Adamczyk could do was see that they were humanely euthanised.

“One was an attempted pet so they clipped its wings to absolute hell,” he said.

“The other one was a wild bird, it couldn’t close its mouth, it couldn’t feed itself, it couldn’t drink.”

Mr Adamczyk estimates that an average sized school oval provides enough worms and insects to feed a family of 10 magpies comfortably, but when people feed them mince, they develop bone and feather abnormalities due to lack of calcium.

“Usually what happens is that the parents go great and they feed it to their babies,” he said.

“As soon as they start walking, they break their legs.

“If they break their legs that’s it for them - especially in the wild.”

Once the birds are brought into care, they are usually beyond recovery, with Mr Adamczyk estimating 90 per cent are euthanised.

View photos A tawny frogmouth and kookaburra used to educate children about wildlife. Source: Animal Relocation & Education More

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