Pamela Roesner, a secretary in the family, consumer and nutrition sciences department, has become close friends with the ducks at the East Lagoon. She often brings bread so she can share her lunch with them.

“I felt bad when they had to empty the lagoon; [the ducks] were not here,” Roesner said.

Roesner said she enjoys sitting at the lagoon and watching the ducks.

She said it reminds her of when she was young and fed ducks with her parents.

Trisha Haeuser, a senior general studies major, said the ducks are polite and bring peace to the lagoon.

Most of the ducks that frequent the lagoon are mallards, biological sciences professor Peter Meserve said.

The North American mallard population is about 9 million, said Leslie Day, an environmental science teacher in New Jersey.

In summer, the mallard can be seen throughout Alaska and much of Canada and the northern United States, Day said.

The ducks come to NIU because the lagoon has open water, shelter near the banks and islands where the ducks can nest and also because people feed them, Meserve said.

It is not bad to try to feed them, Meserve said, except that ducks contribute feces to the water, which leads to nutrient enrichment and algal blooms.

The consequence is that it can make the lagoon stinky and clouded with algae, Meserve said.

Mallards are primarily vegetarians that eat seeds including corn, wheat, barley, bulrushes, wild rice, primrose, willow, seeds of water elm, oak, hackberry and other trees of swamps or river bottoms, Day said.

Mallards also eat some mollusks, insects, small fish, tadpoles, freshwater snails and fish eggs, Day said.