The prevalence of anthropogenic nest materials differs between two distinct populations of migratory birds in Europe

A major impact of human development is the transformation of natural habitats into farming lands and the expansion of built-up areas. Also, plastic pollution is affecting wildlife on a global scale. Discarded plastic is ubiquitous and accessible for birds, which can incorporate them into the nest structure. Here, we describe the differences in type, prevalence, and the amount of anthropogenic nest materials between two populations of terrestrial, mainly farmland bird, the white stork Ciconia ciconia, on a broad geographical scale, from two migratory divides—eastern in Poland and western in Spain (in total 303 nests). In the two populations, we detected significant differences in the incorporation of anthropogenic nest material, as measured by the Human Footprint Index (HFI) and the Impervious Surface Areas (ISA). We found that ISA was positively related to anthropogenic nest material incorporation in the Spanish population, and HFI was positively related to anthropogenic nest material, in contrast to the Polish population, in which the relationships were not significant. Moreover, we showed that the prevalence of nests with anthropogenic nest material was two times higher in Spanish than in the Polish white stork population. This study demonstrates that the behavior of incorporation of the anthropogenic nest material differs between two distinct populations of a single bird species. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-023-27156-1.