2,500-year-old bird's nest found continually used by falcons

2,500-year-old bird's nest found
Matt Walker Editor, Earth News

Gyrfalcon chicks in a nest
Good for generation after generation

A 2,500-year-old bird's nest has been discovered on a cliff in Greenland.

The nesting site is still continually used by gyrfalcons, the world's largest species of falcon, and is the oldest raptor nest ever recorded.

Three other nests, each over 1,000 years old, have also been found, one of which contains feathers from a bird that lived more than 600 years ago.

However, ornithologists fear climate change may soon drive the birds from these ancient nesting sites.

Gyrfalcons live circumpolar to the Arctic. The birds range in colour from being almost exclusively white in Greenland to usually black in Labrador in Canada.

Like many falcons, they do not build nests out of sticks and twigs, but typically lay eggs in bowl-shaped depressions they scrape into existing ledges or old nests made by other birds such as ravens.

But while stick nests are often frequently damaged, preventing their repeated use, gyrfalcons will often revisit some ledges and potholes from year to year.

To find out just how long the birds return to the same site, ornithologist Kurt Burnham of the University of Oxford, UK and colleagues decided to carbon date the guano and other debris that birds leave at various nest sites around Greenland.
1000 year old gyrfalcon nest site in Greenland
An ancient nest, this one dated at a mere 1000 years old.



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Last Edited by Account Deleted by User on 01/06/2011 06:28 AM