Photographs from every continent except Antarctica show birds nesting or tangled in rubbish.
Masks, like this one on a black bittern in Singapore, are the most common pandemic-related items in the photographs
"Basically, if a bird builds a nest using long fibrous materials - like seaweed, branches or reeds - the chances are it will have human debris in its nest somewhere," said Dr Alex Bond from the Natural History Museum in London, and one of the researchers involved. "When you start looking for this stuff, you'll see it everywhere," he said. "And this has really illustrated the huge geographic scope - we had reports from Japan , Australia, Sri Lanka, the UK, North America - it's truly a global issue."Birds will gather plastic fibres and other rubbish, and incorporate it into their nests
"It's almost all masks," said Dr Bond. "And if you think of the different materials a surgical mask is made from - there's the elastic that we see tangled around birds' legs or we might see birds injured by trying to ingest the fabric or the hard piece of plastic that secures it over your nose.
United Kingdom Latest News, United Kingdom Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Global pandemic fears on islands hit by bird fluThe manager of a Scottish bird sanctuary says avian flu could return to devastate next spring.
Read more »
There's a rubbish God of War rip-off on the Xbox storeA cheap and god awful God of War rip-off has been made available to buy on the Xbox store. It's called War Gods Zeus of…
Read more »
Bird Aeris 9 is a 160-180mm travel affordable alloy enduro bikeBird Aeris 9 is a 160mm or 180mm travel aluminum enduro bike with adjustable geometry; a frame costs £1,430 and complete builds start at £2870
Read more »
Must Watch: Innes Graham's meteoric rise into the EWS Top 10At the beginning of this year, Innes Graham was a complete unknown in the world of enduro racing; now he's 9th in the World Overall
Read more »