A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME...(11/16/01)

When you picture friends going out for a day of birdwatching, you probably envision them in the pristine surrounds of a forest with thrushes and warblers singing or perhaps in a garden that’s in full bloom. Often, however, those are not where the most interesting birds are.

You might be surprised how often birders are drawn to what could only be described as unsavory settings. Take the dump, for instance,. Whether you want to use euphemisms such as landfill or transfer station, it’s still a dump. And dumps, especially open ones (those that are not just transfer stations as in Barnstable and many Cape towns today) attract birds and therefore bird watchers.

The dump at Brownsville, Texas, has such a national reputation that every respectable birder has either been there or hopes to go. This totally unappetizing spot is about the only place in North America where one can see the Tamaulipas crow. and the Chihuahuan raven. Both of these species are Mexican birds that just barely make it over the border, hence the motivation for die-hard birders to sojourn there in order to get these birds on their North American bird lists.

Any open dump along the Atlantic coast from Maine to North Carolina in winter provides birders with an unparalleled opportunity for viewing a great variety of gulls. In Massachusetts, this will likely be a concentration of resident herring, ring-billed, laughing and black-backed gulls, together with Iceland and glaucous gulls from the far north and black-headed, lesser black-backed and little gulls from Europe enjoying the site as well. In addition, killdeer, pipits and some shorebirds visit the grassy areas of landfills. No National Audubon Christmas Count would be complete without a trip to at least one of these.

Closely related to dumps but even more stressful to the senses are sewage treatment plants. All sorts of birds are attracted to the offal (awful?) there. Back Bay, outside of Baltimore, is an especially productive (to say nothing of pungent) one. Despite its assailing ambience, it’s a great place in winter. Whenever I visit there, I pluck a bundle of pine needles to hold beneath my nose. Is it worth it? You bet! Not too long ago, birders from all over the country overcame the sensory stimuli in order to see a Ross’s gull, North America’s rarest gull, the same species that brought hundreds to the North Shore of Massachusetts in 1975 and made the cover of Time magazine.

Whether it’s the sewage beds in Spencer, Mass., or those in Lancaster, California, Logan, Utah, or Arlington, Texas, you can be sure that birders will be hanging out, especially in late summer and fall for migrating shorebirds. The muddy, mucky bottoms in each of those places are full of the organisms on which this type of bird feeds. Often, as they peck and probe in the depths, they allow birders to approach closely enough to see their identifying features.

Of course, these enticing places are not restricted to the United States. On a recent trip to Mexico, we found excellent birding at the extensive sewage treatment beds as shown in small part by the accompanying photo.

However, I want to remind you that birders do not usually hang out in reprehensible places. I assure you we spend the majority of our time in places of beauty such as Boston’s Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Mt. Greylock, Provincetown’s Beech Forest and the trails at Ft. Hill, Eastham.

GRAPHIC: An expansive dump in W. Mexico. Photo taken by Nancy Soulette.