One man’s garbage is a common coot treasure, at least when it comes to plastic.
In Amsterdam there are birds Building a nest from a plastic food wrappermasks and other waste have been reported in February for at least 30 years. Ecology. The revelation shows not only how much plastic is currently comparable to the environment, but also the ability to learn about the natural world using human products.
“It’s ironic to think that many of these plastic single-use items are only used for a few minutes by people, but these coots have been around for decades,” says Orcheflorian Hiemstra, a biologist at the Naturis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, Netherlands.
Hiemstra has been studying nesting materials used by urban birds for many years. He records the coordinates of adding face masks to the nest at the height of the Coots-19 pandemic – building materials still used by coots and other birds – have found rebellious magpies and crows. Many birds these days use human trash as nesting material, says Hiemstra.
In 2021, Hiemstra and his colleagues unearthed a common coot (Frika Atla) A nest built on wooden beams protruding from the Rokin Canal in Amsterdam. The nest had multiple plastic waste, especially food baggage. By analyzing the expiration dates of Coots’ collection, Hiemstra constructed nest history by layer using plastic in a way that archaeologists use fossils.
Coots usually nest from plant material that collapses quickly. Therefore, birds cannot reuse their nests every year. However, the incorporation of plastic makes the nest much more stable, allowing the coot to return to the old nest and build on a solid foundation.
In total, Hiemstra’s team shows that multi-year plastic nests found 15 nests, and birds had reused them.
It is inaccurate to use expiration dates to understand the history of the nest. Plastic lasts very long so old pieces can find a way to recent nest weaving. Hiemstra, for example, found a bag of paprika chips from a 1970s brand towards the top of one nest. But when similar expiration packages are bundled together, Hiemstra says it builds confidence that some of the nests were built around that time.
At the deepest part of Rokin Nest, he found several rappers registered in the early 1990s, including the Mars Bar rapper who promotes the 1994 FIFA World Cup.
“Oddly, the rappers are in a pristine state, as if they were scattered yesterday,” says Hiemstra. “But you know it’s 30 years old. It really shows that plastic stays here.”
