Coots are recycling our rubbish to make longer-lasting plastic nests
Mars bar wrappers, McDonald's packaging, face masks and much more plastic waste is being reused by some water-dwelling birds to nest in the middle of big cities, researchers have found.
Some of these nests are even used for decades, as can be seen from the old plastic packaging, according to a new study on coot nests, published in the journal Ecology.
In autumn 2021, a team led by Auke-Florian Hiemstra from Leiden University in the Netherlands collected nests of coots (Fulica atra) in the centre of Amsterdam.
When they disassembled the nests, which consisted largely of plastic, the researchers came across layer upon layer of increasingly old plastic debris.
The most-used nest was found in a canal under a mooring point in a hollow metal pipe that just reached the surface of the water – curiously, opposite the University of Amsterdam's archaeological museum.
The team found 635 pieces of plastic debris in it. More than 200 of these came from food packaging, 32 of which still had a legible date that allowed the plastic to be dated.
The oldest plastic pieces dated back to the 1990s: One Mars bar referred to the 1994 World Cup in the United States, while some of the many McDonald's wrappers were from 1996.
The upper parts of the nest, on the other hand, were lined with 14 Covid masks, so they were from 2020 at the earliest.
"The nest tells the entire story of these birds in Amsterdam," says Hiemstra, a nest researcher who also posts on his latest findings to birdwatchers and nature lovers on social media.
In normal conditions, coot nests are typically rebuilt each breeding season from reed and other water plants that degrade quickly. However when the animals first entered the city centre of Amsterdam in 1989, such materials were scarce, according to the study.
Photos suggest that the nest opposite the archaeological museum has been used for breeding about 10 times in the past 30 years – thanks to plastic waste. This, the team writes, saves the birds the laborious task of building a nest every year.
Incidentally, the only other bird species to nest in the centre of Amsterdam, apart from the coot, is the great crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus), according to the study. It too can build its nest with plastic.
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