Landfill of birds

When following some seagulls, I drove past the Tasjeel-Dewa (Dubai Electricity and Water Authority) and Tadweer Sewage Treatment Plant in Al Warsan.

I saw garbage trucks heading towards a huge pit, more than 10 metres in depth and one square kilometre in expanse.

These trucks carry garbage from skips kept along roads and residential areas in Dubai. When I reached the landfill, I saw the whole area filled with trash. I guess this is one of the ways cities dispose of their refuse – filling up pits and low-lying areas used for developments.

Despite the stench, I saw thousands of black-headed gulls, dozens of cattle egrets, bank mynahs, common mynahs, sparrows, bulbuls, grey francolins and crows sifting through the garbage for food.

The standing water and reed bed and mounds provided an apt environment for resident and migratory birds.

I counted several hundred gulls here, but thousands were among the trash: a few grey herons, nearly two dozen black-winged stilts, red-wattled lapwing, over a dozen white-tailed lapwing; smaller waders like the redshank, greenshank, Kentish plover, little stints, etc. Then there were insectivorous birds like the barn swallow, pallid swift, pale crag martin and bee-eaters.

It was rewarding to find nearly 100 tunnel nests of bank mynah on the 10-metre high hard soil wall of the pit dug by the authority.