Mother birds use cigarettes to make ... food for children?

A local resident in Largo, Florida whose account is Karen Mason shared a picture of the heartbreaking incident on her personal Facebook page. The image shows a thin, black bird (like a seagull) giving children a piece of abandoned cigarette on the beach.

Mother birds use tobacco as food for children, causing many visitors to . stunned.

Images are quickly shared on social networks, attracting the attention of many people. A comment that says "really sad", "definitely worries you" . Karen Mason also shared a view calling for people not to leave cigarette butts after smoking on the beach.

Karen Mason wrote: "The mother bird gave the cigarette piece as a food to her child. It is time for us not to treat the coast as a giant ashtray."

According to the Ocean Conservancy report in 2018, cigarette tips are one of the ten most collected waste from beaches around the world. In the US alone, more than 842,000 cigarette butts were collected only in 2017 at beaches.