What did McDonald's packaging look like 30 years ago? The Bird's Nest remembers

Biologists discovered an unusual bird's nest at a cruise ship terminal in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Auke-Florian Hiemstra

Hidden in its layers of nesting materials are more than 600 pieces of human trash dating back more than 30 years , with the earliest dating back to 1991.

Just like digging for fossils in the strata, researchers uncovered the garbage sleeping in the bird's nest layer by layer, and from it they deciphered a history of changes in the lives of birds and humans[1].

Opening the "Garbage Time Capsule"

This particular nest was built atop a disused foundation pile by the Coot ( Fulica atra ), a common waterfowl that has adapted well to city life and can be found in every local canal.

Coot (Fulica atra) | Wikipedia

In September 2021, after the breeding season ended and the nest was idle, the researchers collected the nest and took it back to the laboratory for analysis along with some other nests. All the man-made objects in the nesting material were separated one by one, and the age of these objects was identified to infer the time when the birds built the nest.

Researcher Auke-Florian Hiemstra dismantling a bird's nest | Auke-Florian Hiemstra

A total of 635 man-made objects were found in the nest. Thirty-two of these objects had clear time characteristics - most of them were discarded food packaging with expiration dates printed on them. Although not completely accurate, these dates can roughly determine when the birds collected nesting materials.

Use-by date labels help researchers analyze the age of litter and when bird nests were built | Auke-Florian Hiemstra

The garbage on the top layer of the bird's nest is very recent, indicating that it was added in the last one or two years. In addition to food packaging, 14 complete medical masks and 4 elastic bands from the same type of masks were found in this layer of the bird's nest. These astonishing numbers of masks are the remnants of the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.

As the dismantling progressed, the garbage the researchers found became older and older. In the nesting material at the bottom, they even found a 30-year-old chocolate bar packaging bag with a promotional advertisement for the 1994 World Cup printed on it.

At the bottom of the Bird's Nest lies a 30-year-old Mars chocolate bar packaging bag, which still advertises the 1994 World Cup held in the United States | AUKE-FLORIAN HIEMSTRA

These layers of garbage indicate that this nest has been there for at least 30 years, and that it has been constantly renovated by the birds over the past 30 years. When the new breeding season arrives, the bone crested chickens reuse the old nests left behind , and then add a layer of new material to reinforce them. Researchers believe that this patched-up nest has been used by at least three generations of bone crested chickens (the lifespan of this bird is usually 5-10 years).

A chronology of litter in the bird's nest | Auke-Florian Hiemstra

It wasn’t until 1989 that people began to observe the Coots moving into the city center of Amsterdam, so this ancient nest almost witnessed the entire process of these birds’ migration to the city.

The "garbage layer" of the Bird's Nest also records the changes in human life. For example, researchers found fragments of McDonald's hamburger boxes at the bottom of the Bird's Nest. These hamburger boxes are made of polystyrene foam . This type of packaging was used around 1996, and now hamburger boxes have long been replaced with paper.

Styrofoam hamburger box, circa 1996 | Auke-Florian Hiemstra et al.

The Bird's Nest transformed by the city

The discovery is interesting, but also odd—bone-crested chicken nests aren't supposed to have a history.

In the natural environment, the nesting materials of bone crested chickens are usually wetland plants such as reeds and cattails . These natural nests are originally "disposable": they decay quickly and cannot be used again in the second year.

In the wild, the nests of the coots were originally made of perishable plant material | Wikipedia

What makes it possible to reuse bird nests is human waste in cities. Even near wet water, the degradation rate of these plastic wastes is still very slow . Therefore, the bone crested chicken nests with a lot of garbage are more likely to maintain their structure for a long time, and only need simple repairs to be used for another year.

This kind of reuse actually makes life easier for the coots. They don’t have to collect as many building materials or build from scratch, so they can spend more time and energy protecting their territories and raising their chicks.

However, this ease also comes at a price. Overly solid plastic waste can entangle young birds, posing a risk, and reusing old nests can increase the chances of parasite infection. All in all, it’s hard to say whether this urban survival strategy is a blessing or a curse.

It's unclear whether urban coots' use of human waste as nesting material is a blessing or a curse. | Auke-Florian Hiemstra

Now, the "garbage time capsules" found in the bird's nest are still preserved in the Hague Municipal Museum, and they have become part of the " Anthropocene " themed exhibition.

The Anthropocene represents a new geological epoch: an era in which human activities have had an indelible and profound impact on the natural environment.

References

[1]https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecy.70010

[2]https://www.sciencenews.org/article/plastic-waste-fossils-bird-nest-history

[3]https://www.naturalis.nl/en/follow-our-stories/birds-nests-reveal-history-of-plastic-age

Author: Window Knocking Rain

Edited by: Yellowtail Pollock

Image credit: Auke-Florian Hiemstra

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)

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