REAL LIFE NEWS: STORKS NO LONGER FLYING SOUTH FOR THE WINTER
by Hazed
“Why do birds fly south for the winter? Because it’s too far to walk.” This was one of my favourite jokes in my Great Big Bumper Book of Jokes when I was a child. But for some birds, it’s no longer true.
Storks on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) are now seen to stay where they are rather than migrate south to Africa, because of the huge amount of food readily available to them on landfill sites.
Portugal currently has 14,000 white storks spending the winter there. Previously the birds would arrive in Spring and then fly south in late summer or early autumn, heading for warmer climes in Africa. Now, they are happy to remain at the nesting sites all winter.
A team studying the storks fitted 48 of them with GPS/GSM tracker/logging units which reported their position five times a day. The data received showed that they had taken up permanent residence. One of the team said, “We found that the landfill sites enable year-round nest use, which is an entirely new behaviour that has developed very recently. This strategy enables the resident birds to select the best nest sites and to start breeding earlier. Having a nest close to a guaranteed food supply also means that the storks are less inclined to leave for the winter. They instead spend their non-breeding season defending their highly desirable nest locations.”
Unfortunately, the storks will have to start migrating again soon, since new EU directives mean that Portugal’s rubbish dumps are going to be replaced by new facilities where food waste in handled under cover.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/16/stork_junk_food/
