HENRY

There’s a fascinating paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society demonstrating that a number of bird species in Chernobyl prefer to nest in areas with low radioactivity:

(the) Great tit Parus major and pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca significantly avoided nest boxes in heavily contaminated areas, with a stronger effect in flycatchers than in tits. These preferences could not be attributed to variation in habitat quality or resource abundance, as determined by analyses of habitat use and the relationship between radiation and life-history characters. Likewise, none of these effects could be attributed to individuals of a specific age breeding in the most contaminated areas. (…) We suggest that individual body condition rather than secondary effects of radiation on resource abundance account for the effects on nest box use and hatching success.

The full paper is here and The New Scientist also has coverage

Posted on March 28th, 2007 by Simon Greenhill