DUCKS in a Highbridge park are believed to be the first in the world to be fed via a contactless solar panelled feeder model.

A climate-friendly sun-powered duck food dispenser is being installed today (Friday, April 29) in Apex Park.

Officers at Sedgemoor District Council have been working with The Feed Ducks Initiative to provide the innovative scheme.

The dispenser is made from recycled plastic equating to the equivalent of 20,000 plastic bottles.

Apex Park is the first location in the UK to have a contactless solar powered feeder model – and is probably a first across the whole world.

The duck feed dispenser is contactless and for a small fee dispenses healthy duck food for the visitors to Apex Park to use when feeding the local quackers.

A portion of the proceeds are donated back to the Friends of Apex Park to help develop biodiversity and environmental programmes at their local open space.

The other proceeds are for the duck food itself.

A spokesperson for the council said: "With many people and children walking out and about, in parks, by the canal or river, it’s always lovely to see children feeding the ducks, usually with stale bread.

"However, ducks need a varied diet to be healthy and bread doesn’t hold much nutritional value for them.

"It fills the ducks' stomach so that they don’t forage for food that they would normally eat, which can lead to malnutrition.

"Uneaten soggy bread can cause a build-up of bad nutrients, which can lead to more algae growing around the water.

"This, in turn, can attracts pest such as rats and can be harmful to dogs that drink from the lake.

If you don’t want to use the feeder, we do know that ducks love the following foods:

Sweetcorn, frozen or fresh;

Lettuce – rocket, kale and iceberg;

Peas, frozen or fresh;

Oats – flapjack, rolled oats or instant porridge;

Seeds – bird seeds or human seeds and nuts;

Rice, cooked or uncooked.

The Feed Ducks Initiative is an environmental scheme aimed at reducing the amount of bread and other food which is not good for the ducks digestion, which is fed to them by visitors to the park.