Abstract
Pollution by anthropogenic litter is a major threat to global ecosystems. Seabirds are frequently used as environmental monitors of litter ingestion, but similar research is rare for terrestrial birds. Here, we focused on pellet analysis from 117 nests of an iconic bird of the Western Palearctic, the white stork (Ciconia ciconia), breeding in southern and southwestern Poland in a farmland landscape, far away from large dumps and landfills. We found that most prey items in the diet of white storks were invertebrates (particularly from orders Coleoptera, Orthoptera, and Hymenoptera) but vertebrate prey comprised most of the biomass. Further analysis revealed that anthropogenic litter was found in 22.7% of pellets (34.2% of breeding pairs) with plastic (8.4%) and cigarette filters (6.9%) being most prevalent. This study represents the first assessment through pellet analysis of the ingestion of anthropogenic litter by live wild storks in Poland and also by a migratory population of white storks. Our study indicates a potentially significant transfer of plastic and other anthropogenic material through terrestrial food webs.
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Acknowledgements
We are thankful to farmers and volunteers who helped us during the recording of white stork nests. We would also like to thank Tim Sparks for English language correction and Zbigniew Kwieciński for help with pellet data interpretation.
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LJ, KW, and PT established the original idea of the study in the field; PM with help from PT did analyses; PM wrote the first version of the manuscript with the help from PT; JK identified the prey from pellets; LJ, KW, JS, SC, KM, MP, HS, and JW collected pellets in the field. All authors accepted the final version of the manuscript.
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Mikula, P., Karg, J., Jerzak, L. et al. Diet analysis and the assessment of plastic and other indigestible anthropogenic litter in the white stork pellets. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 6922–6928 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31710-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31710-2