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Long-Established Urban Eurasian Coots Returned Faster and Showed Less Neophobia Than Non-urban Birds

Eurasian Coot in natural habitat
Research · Behaviour

A field experiment in Poland found that Eurasian coots (Fulica atra) from a long-established urban population were less shy around people and less neophobic at the nest than birds from non-urban sites. Neophobia is reluctance or fear toward something unfamiliar. The study compared responses to a human intruder and to a novel object during the breeding season.

Researchers compared three populations in 2023 and 2024. The Warsaw urban population had been established by the 1960s or earlier, whereas urban colonisation in Łódź began only in the late 1990s and continued over the following two decades. Non-urban birds bred at fishpond complexes in central Poland with little human disturbance. In one experiment, a researcher approached an active nest and remained within 0.5 m for one minute. In the other, a green cotton strip was placed beside the nest as a novel object.

Eurasian coot and green cotton strip used as a novel object beside a nest
Figure 1 from Włodarczyk et al. (2026): Eurasian coot and the green cotton strip used as the novel object at a nest. Springer Nature. CC BY 4.0.

Long-established urban birds returned faster after human approach

The populations did not differ clearly in the probability of returning to the nest or resuming incubation during the human-intruder trial. They did differ in how quickly they did so. Birds from the old urban population returned to the nest after an average of 3.10 minutes and resumed incubation after 3.31 minutes. Non-urban birds took 7.50 minutes to return and 9.30 minutes to resume incubation. Birds from the newer urban population showed intermediate response times of 4.96 and 6.09 minutes.

The long-established urban population showed the weakest neophobia

The novel-object experiment showed a similar gradient. In the old urban population, 56.7% of pairs returned to the nest during the observation period and 53.3% resumed incubation. Among non-urban birds, the corresponding proportions were 20.6% and 8.8%; the newer urban population again showed intermediate responses.

The authors interpret the results as experimental evidence for reduced shyness and neophobia in the long-established urban population. The intermediate responses in Łódź are consistent with behavioural phenotypes developing gradually after urban colonisation, but the authors caution that the study included only one old and one new urban population and that separating behavioural plasticity from microevolutionary change would require further experimental validation.

Sources and image credit

  1. Włodarczyk, R., Chyb, A., Drzewińska-Chańko, J., Andrysiak, D., Jedlikowski, J., & Minias, P. (2026). Urbanization reduces shyness and neophobia in a common waterbird. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 80, 88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-026-03765-xPrimary open-access research article published 13 June 2026. Field experiments in an old urban population in Warsaw, a newer urban population in Łódź and non-urban fishpond populations in central Poland tested responses to a human intruder and a novel object at active nests. Old urban coots returned to nests and resumed incubation faster after human approach and were more likely to return and resume incubation with a novel object present than non-urban birds; the newer urban population showed intermediate responses.

Image: Norbert Nagel / Wikimedia Commons — Eurasian coot at Mönchbruch, Hesse, Germany, 6 April 2026; cropped to 16:9. Representative image for this story; not presented as an animal or scene from the reported study or event. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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