There are few things more disappointing than taking your children to feed the ducks and then realising you've forgotten to bring the bread.

But what about buying a bag of stale crusts from a village tea shop, which is clearly capitalising on people's interest in its local water fowl population, and then discovering that the ducks don't actually want it?

I was keen to introduce my New Zealand friend Sue to the delights of a popular Sussex village. Even though she has been living in this country for nine years, I still, rather patronisingly, think she needs to be educated to the charms of a typical English country scene. So we took our toddlers to Stanmer Village near Brighton.

Sue soon said how "absolutely wonderful and gorgeous" it was to find a rural idyll so close to a densely populated conurbation. And it did look like a picture in a Janet and John book from 30 years ago.

On the green in front of the church, dads were unknotting kite strings and assembling cricket stumps, mums were unpacking picnic baskets filled with egg mayonnaise sandwiches and old-fashioned lemonade, and kids were chasing each other on their bikes and foot scooters. Not a Game Boy or a Pokmon in sight.

In a nearby meadow, cows were grazing peacefully and the air was filled with the scent of manure and the sound of birdsong. It was as if the 21st Century was still just a distant rumble.

"Let's feed the ducks," said Sue to her one-year-old daughter Minnie as we strolled up to the perfect little pond in the shadow of an old stone church.

"Yeah, yeah," said Minnie, clapping her chubby hands in glee. Sue then reached into the bag of stale crusts, which had just cost her 25p and threw them at the water. They landed with a gentle pat on the murky surface and we waited for the whoosh of wings and splash of webbed feet. But the feasting didn't begin. The ducks, who were lined up dozing on a shady part of the bank, could barely be bothered to lift their bills from under their wings.

"Yoohoo," I shouted, thinking that perhaps the glare of the sun had prevented them noticing their tea was adrift.

But it made no difference. Where ducks all gone?" asked my dismayed two-year-old, Eve. "I don't think they want their bread," I said.

"I fink they liked some baked beans, mummy," suggested Eve, "and chicken nuggets."

I was about to tell her that ducks don't eat these, when it struck me that there was no evolutionary reason why ducks should eat bread, either. Their diet in the wild consists of insects and weeds.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, they're not into baking their own loaves or popping out to Waitrose for a sliced white when their supplies run out.

This bunch was clearly not happy to be bunged yet more crusts from the tea shop and, I assumed, this was some sort of silent protest against human intervention in the natural food chain, which could catch on in parks and village ponds throughout the country.

Or else it could be that they just weren't hungry.