"The oldest layer is as old as me — all my life, a bird was nesting here," said Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist at the ...

In fact, this has already begun: Researchers revealed the history of bird nests in The Netherlands by scrutinizing plastic litter used in the nests’ construction. Many different birds ...

Look inside the nests of Eurasian coots, and you’ll find a surprising history of human plastic production. Much like tree rings hold climate records, bird nests preserve an unintentional archive ...

Plastic waste has let common coots reuse nests year after year. Scientists have now used the trash layers to date how old nests are.

Nest researcher Auke-Florian Hiemstra stumbled upon a bird nest that appeared to go back 30 years in time – filled with historical plastics. His discovery of successive layers of plastic in birds’ ...

Researchers quantified the plastic contamination inhaled by dozens of bird species using laser imaging, then used a calculation called the Polymer Hazard Index to determine its health impacts. " ...

More information: Auke‐Florian Hiemstra et al, Birds documenting the Anthropocene: Stratigraphy of plastic in urban bird nests, Ecology (2025). DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70010 ...

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. PHILADELPHIA—At ...

If the bird loses the function of its wings ... We found things from Asia, South America and even the UK.' Plastic content inside the stomach of a dead shearwater chick can be seen through the taut ...

Microscopic plastic pollutants drifting through the air ... They collected lung samples from each bird and performed two types of chemical analyses. They used laser direct infrared technology ...