A bird was spotted feeding its chick a cigarette butt in 'heartbreaking' image.
The skimmer bird was spotted on a beach in Florida passing the butt to its tiny chick, who clutched it in his mouth appearing ready to swallow.
Captured by a woman identifying herself as Karen Catbird online, she shared the image to Facebook , where many commented on how 'heartbreaking' it was.
Karen captioned the image: "If you smoke, please don’t leave your butts behind."
She then uploaded another image of the chick with the butt in its mouth.
Karen wrote: "This skimmer chick was offered a cigarette butt by [its] parent. It’s time we cleaned up our beaches and stopped treating them like one giant ashtray."
One Facebook user wrote: "Absolutely heartbreaking"
While, Sherry Brigham added: "Just sickens me...Plzz put your butts out in the garbage or put them in your pack if u don't see a can.
"I smoke but never do I throw them on the ground... just disgusting think of our wildlife."
Globally, cigarette butts made the top 10 rubbish items collected from beaches, according to the 2018 Ocean Conservancy report, reports Fox News .
Other items in the top 10 list included plastic bottle caps, straws and plastic carrier bagsl.
