Abstract
Throughout the Anthropocene, urbanization has changed the environment for birds, modifying the types and abundance of available materials to build their nests. Discarded plastics and other anthropogenic materials are very abundant in urbanized and agricultural areas and are being used by birds to build nests, constituting a potential threat to them. Objective: To evaluate the materials used for several species of birds living in an urbanized environment. Methods: We evaluated the composition of 20 nests of several species of birds found in the campus of Universidad Nacional. Results: 52.6% of nests contained some sort of waste classified in 13 types of anthropogenic materials, where the most common were wool, strings and thread. The species with the highest percentage of nest weight comprised by anthropogenic material was Campylorhynchus rufinucha Conclusions: Our results demonstrates the widespread use of anthropogenic waste as nesting material.
Highlights
Urbanization has affected the materials available for bird nesting, including anthropogenic materials that may be dangerous to the birds
In order to contribute to the understanding of the use of plastics and other anthropogenic materials by several species of common inland birds for nest construction, we report a short evaluation of this so far disregarded environmental issue
Nest components were separated and classified as either organic components or anthropogenic materials. The latter were classified by type and the percentage of use was estimated as the total weight of anthropogenic waste out of the total dry weight of the nest
Summary
Urbanization has affected the materials available for bird nesting, including anthropogenic materials that may be dangerous to the birds. Discarded plastics and other anthropogenic materials are very abundant in urbanized and agricultural areas (Townsend & Baker, 2014). A study on American crows, showed 85,2% of sampled nests contained anthropogenic materials and 5,6% of nestlings present in those nests were found entangled, dead, injured or malformed (Townsend & Baker, 2014).
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