White storks are apparently so addicted to junk food that they are willing to travel 100 kilometers to landfills located in Spain and Portugal just to feed on anything edible from these garbage dumps.

In this new study, researchers from the University of East Anglia in the U.K., revealed that there is an increasing population of birds that are now forced to change their migration routes due to the unprecedented changes in their habitat and environment that resulted from huge impacts from humans.

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Instead of these white storks journeying to their yearly trip from Europe to Africa in the winter, they prefer staying in landfills where they can easily collect and eat leftovers from human waste.

However, there are several landfills that are set to be shut down by the European Union's Landfill Directives, where experts now believe that this can significantly affect the migratory birds' populations.

According to lead author of the study, UEA ecologist Aldina Franco, this recent population boom of the white stork in Portugal in the past 20 years can provide researchers the chance to study the avian creatures' migratory behavior and patterns.

These new findings reveal that some of the bird species especially the white stork, now seem to inhabit these countries with landfills, leading to abandoning their migratory routes in Europe. Franco says that this study can provide a better understanding of what causes and mechanisms that triggered this drastic change in their migratory routes.

Researchers examined the white storks' preference of food that is available in the landfills where they discovered that this can impact how the birds choose to build their nests especially how far are they willing to travel every day including the ranges of their search for food.

In order to monitor the brids' behavior, the researchers placed GPS tracking devices on 48 birds where they transmitted their locations five times a day, providing more detailed information about their behavior. These devices are also provided by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the University of Lisbon in Portugal.

Data from the tracking devices revealed that the birds are now reliant on the food that is commonly found in landfills especially during times when they cannot scavenge enough food during non breeding season. The landfills also served as a nesting ground all year round where the birds even changed their breeding habits into an earlier time than normal.

These year round nesting grounds in landfills offered the birds an opportunity to give up their migration during winter where they spend much of their energy protecting their new nest locations.

This new study is published in the journal Movement Ecology.