During a diet study of Eleonora's falcons by the use of cameras I recorded a case where the female provided and fed the nestlings with plastic waste (snack wrapper). I think the wrapper has become airborne and mistaken for prey.
I assume that this is very rare, and wonder if this has been reported for other bird of prey?
Hi Ronny,
You might find the following report by Birdlife International useful. It references articles with examples of ingestion of garbage by raptors (and specifically plastic):
http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/sowb/casestudy/180
Cheers,
Sari
Hi Ronny,
I have just come across this:
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1676/14-107.1
Maybe you will find it useful. After all, vultures are also raptors...:)
Cheers, Kasia
Here is online version of our paper about plastic mistaken for prey by a Eleonora's falcon providing food to dependent nestlings.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.02.069
If you'd ever be tempted to go to the dark side of seabirds - skuas and gulls, I co-authored a recent paper where we found that great skuas in faroes get plastic from the seabirds they prey upon. We didn't investigate if any of this got transferred into the chicks, but that would be an interesting new direction to take it.
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