'Addiction' Waste, Reluctant Wild Migratory Birds

Lisbon - Bird white storks (Ciconia boyciana) Portugal are migratory animals. In the winter, a cousin of the stork flew away to Africa, towards a warmer place.

However, lately they choose not to migrate and it is clearly worrying. Any drastic changes in animal behavior often has a negative impact, but surprisingly, the number of birds increases.

Now, there are more than 14,000 birds in Portugal in the winter. That number increased tenfold over the last 20 years.

An increasing number of them also coincides with the increasing number of waste disposal sites. were related.

The garbage disposal is supplying food to eat heron, including junk food.

Researchers trying to understand the changing behavior of the animal to see if they stop migrating because of junk food, or the temperature of the heated Europe.

To understand this, a team of 48 bird watching white storks by placing a GPS monitor small. Such objects can track their location five times a day, to monitor how often the animals take a trip to the disposal site and how fast they fly.

The conclusion of these observations shocking. The disposal site providing food to white storks birds throughout the year.

It also affects how they nest, grew up, and where the animals lived.

The bird colony founded on the disposal site. Based on the description in the journal Ecology Movement, the team estimates that 80 percent of white storks spent almost all his time in a heap of garbage.

Birds White Storks in a pile of garbage (Photo: University of East Anglia).

There, they eat almost anything, although not all are good for consumption. It is quoted by the BBC 

style="text-align: justify;">"Every time a garbage truck unloading at the site, the birds take what they can," said one of the authors of the study from the University of East Anglia, Aldina Franco.

Birds that are included in a family with the crane, formerly known as plastic eaters, including parts of the old computer.

"They really tried to take the rest of the food we waste ... such as hamburgers, meat offal and fish," said Franco told the BBC.

The meal supply in the near future will be reduced. This happens because the European Union stipulates that food waste needs to be recycled.

In addition, open dumping sites will also be replaced by a closed sewage treatment facilities, so that the birds can not access it.

Therefore, white storks facing an uncertain future. Whether they will migrate to Africa as they always did, or will remain live near the landfill.

Birds White Storks in a pile of garbage (Photo: University of East Anglia).

"What would happen if the disposal site is closed in the form of food resources will no longer be available, and a collection of white storks are located near these places may be a shortage of food," said Franco.

They will return to normal foraging strategy, eating small insects, or perhaps starving.

The behavior of the birds that have been changed in 30 years. The hope they will reverse the habit quickly and begin to behave as they did before.

"Basically we do not know," said Franco. "We do not know whether they can change the strategy to migrate from one year to the next."

"I'm very curious to find out what is going to Portugal storks birds do when the landfill is closed. We will continue to keep an eye on the bird and see how their response to the change."

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