Covid pandemic forced red kites to change feeding behaviour

Red kites have stayed off the roads during coronavirus Keystone-SDA

The Covid pandemic has forced red kites in Switzerland to rethink their behaviour. During the lockdown, there was less traffic – and therefore less roadkill. The birds, some of which fed on road casualties, had to adapt their hunting strategy.

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A new study by the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach, canton Lucerne, shows how they did this. “Before the lockdowns, red kites specifically sought out areas near roads when the natural food supply was scarce in order to feed on the carcasses of animals that had died in accidents,” Benedetta Catitti, first author of the study, told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA.

During the lockdowns, however, they avoided these areas. Instead, the birds orientated themselves more towards places where they were fed by humans, as the researchers showed in the study published in the journal Biology Letters. After the lockdowns, they adapted their behaviour again and preferred to stay close to the road, even if places with human feeders remained popular.

“It’s a fascinating example of how animals can flexibly adapt their behaviour to survive,” said Catitti. She said this adaptability could also be a key factor in the continued success of red kites in Switzerland.

+ Adaptable red kites doing well in Switzerland

“It is generally important to understand how we humans intervene in the ecology of animals and how animals react to us, even in very subtle and often unrecognisable ways,” she said.

Red kites with backpacks

In order to be able to study the red kites, the researchers fitted young red kites with GPS trackers shortly before they left the nest. “These trackers are like a kind of rucksack that we can put on the birds,” says Catitti.

The trackers also include a solar panel that supplies them with power. This means we always know exactly where the birds are.

The resulting data is also used for many other studies. For example, it was discovered that, as they get older, red kites tend to spend the winter in Switzerland instead of flying south.

For the study on the impact of the pandemic, the researchers analysed data from 199 red kites. The pandemic provided a unique opportunity to study the influence of human behaviour on animals, Catitti said. It was like a huge, natural experiment that could hardly have been carried out artificially, she said.

Adapted from German by AI/ts

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