Distressing Image Shows Bird Feeding Chick Cigarette Butt

Ruan Van Zijl / Truth Theory
At a beach in Florida, US, a black skimmer bird was recently photographed picking up a cigarette but and putting it in it’s baby’s mouth.

Karen Mason is the woman who captured the photo’s on the 20th of June 2019 and posted it on her Facebook page and told her friends “If you smoke, please don’t leave your butts behind.”

Karen Mason added: “It’s time we cleaned up our beaches and stopped treating them like one giant ashtray. #nobuttsforbabies.”

Some of the people who commented on her post said: the sight was “heartbreaking and devastating. ”

Josee Noel wrote: ” They don’t want their butts, as if we do! Time to ban them, everywhere! What about our rights? Nature’s? Toxicity off the charts!”

Susan Nagi wrote: ” The baby chick needs to become a poster child for change.”

Karen Mason, who is known online as Karen Catbird said:  ” Whatever helps to get people to think before they toss.”  when she was flooded with requests from the worldwide media to republish her photos.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, skimmer’s nest on the sand along the beaches and their nesting season is from May to early September every year.

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Truth Theory recently covered a story of how Nearly 300.000 Cigarette Butts Collected In Brussels By Volunteers, In Only 3 Hours although this is good news that clean up operations are underway and people are willing to give a hand to clean up it’s still alarming to see how bad this situation is.

Cigarette butts have for decades been the most-collected item on beaches around the world according to data collected by the NGO Ocean Conservancy last year.

At the end of the day, it is our responsibility to look after not only yourself but after our environment and the animals that share this planet with us.