Fibre-optic lines used to guide battlefield drones are finding an unexpected second life in bird nests, offering researchers evidence of war’s changing environmental footprint.
A small bird’s nest woven from fibre-optic cable and grass near the front line in Ukraine is offering researchers an unusual glimpse of how the more than four-year-old conflict is reshaping the natural environment.
Ultra-thin fibre-optic cables now cover areas along the 1,200-km (746-mile) front line, where Ukrainian and Russian troops use them to guide aerial attack drones and make the aircraft impervious to electronic jamming.
The cables can stretch for 20 km and are left tangled in trees, scattered across fields and draped over rooftops in Ukraine’s frontline regions, where they glisten in the sunlight like giant spider webs.
Birds have begun using the discarded cables to build their nests, according to Yana Hrynko, a senior researcher at Kyiv’s War Museum, who cautiously examined two delicate nests sent to the museum from the front line by the armed forces.
“Objects such as bird nests with fragments of optic fibre demonstrate the change in the nature of war,” Hrynko said.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 with tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery. Seeking to counter Russia’s advantage in such conventional equipment, Ukraine has poured resources into developing aerial drones, which now dominate the battlefield.
Researchers do not yet know which bird species built the nests or how they managed to collect the long cables, Hrynko said.
“The first nest mainly contains dry grass and fibre-optic cable. And it’s pretty tightly twisted,” she said.
Several Ukrainian servicemen in the frontline regions of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia have also found such nests and posted photographs and videos of them online.
One of the two nests will remain in Kyiv as part of the War Museum’s war collection, while the other will be sent to the Netherlands for study before being returned, researchers said.
Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a 33-year-old biologist based in the Dutch city of Leiden who specialises in artificial nest materials, said Ukraine’s rich avian biodiversity meant many species could have constructed the nests.
“We’re going to look for DNA traces still in a nest to determine who actually made the nest,” Hiemstra said. “I have never seen nests like this before – and I have seen many, many bird nests.”
The effect of fibre-optic cable on birds could be mixed, Hiemstra said. Birds could be harmed if they become entangled in the material, but the cables could also help them construct stronger nests.
“And by documenting this nest, we’re also documenting the impact of war on nature in Ukraine,” Hiemstra said.
This post is republished from Reuters.
