Landfill Wildlife

     On December 12, 2016, I drove to a landfill near Morgantown, Berks County, Pennsylvania that I have known about for years to see what birds were in and around it.  Land just north of Morgantown has woodlands, human-made impoundments, overgrown fields and hedgerow thickets between those fields that feed and shelter adaptable wildlife in that area.  But it also contains expressways and their accesses and cloverleafs, state roads, corporate centers, other businesses and the landfill. 
     As I approached the landfill, a blizzard of thousands of ring-billed gulls lifted off it, circled it a few times, then settled into it again like a snowfall of giant flakes.  A minute later a great, dark swarm of starlings rose from the landfill and created several pictures in the sky as the flock abruptly turned this way and that.  Then they, too, settled back into the landfill, on the fence surrounding it and on nearby tall trees.  No doubt, ring-bills and starlings are at that landfill all day, every day, in winter to ingest edible garbage brought in by a parade of trash trucks.  The gulls spend winter nights bobbing on local impoundments, while starlings find shelter in groves of coniferous trees or among buildings in cities and towns.   
     I was outside that landfill for a couple of hours on December 12 and saw many of the ring-bills and starlings there take flight in great flocks at frequent intervals.  And each exodus by one or the other of  those species is exciting, inspiring and entertaining to see.  The gulls are adapted to open, human-made habitats because they evolved on beaches and salt marshes where their great flocks can form.  When not in flight or eating, ring-bills in the landfill stood in white and pale-gray masses on its floor, as they congregate on beaches and flats.  And those gulls standing on landfill soil were undisturbed by the big trash trucks that drove close to them.  Starlings have adapted to most every human-made habitat, including this dumping area, much to their benefit as a species.  Adaptable species of any kind have a future. 
     Sprinklings of wintering American crows, turkey vultures and black vultures are also adaptable, abundant scavengers, like the ring-bills and starlings.  The crows and vultures daily come to this landfill to consume edible garbage through the winter, but not in great congregations.  Turkey vultures soar, with wing tips uplifted, into the wind and down on the landfill with little expenditure of energy.  Black vultures sail down with intermittent series of rapid wing beats and soaring.  The vultures spend winter nights in the tops of trees in wooded valleys that break the force of cold winds to an extent.     
     Like the surrounding countryside, the sloping edges of the landfill are covered by thickets of young trees of various kinds, including several red junipers and stag-horned sumacs, shrubbery such as multiflora rose and Tartarian honeysuckle, bittersweet vines and tall weeds and grass, including goldenrod and foxtail grass.  All these plants hold down the soil and provide food and cover for adaptable wildlife.  During the short time I was watching the landfill for the larger, flock birds, I saw northern cardinals, song sparrows and white-throated sparrows eating seeds from weeds and grasses.  And I saw a flock of American robins ingesting the fuzzy, red berries of a long line of staghorn sumac trees.  A sharp-shinned hawk was present near where I sat as that little hawk watched for small birds to catch and consume.  And I saw a few red-tailed hawks along the landfill slopes as they looked for mice to snare and ingest. 
      As each section of the dumping area fills with trash, soil is pushed over it and planted to grass seed.  The seeds of other plants blow in on the wind, or are carried in bird droppings to those grass-planted spots.  Eventually a variety of vegetation will fill those once bare-ground places, hold down the soil and feed and shelter a variety of adaptable wildlife.  What were once open sores on the landscape are reclaimed by plants and wild animals that make the countryside lovely again.
     Landfills, including this one, don't have to be wounds on the land, with proper management.  After trash is buried by soil, plants can be planted or allowed to take hold on their own.  That vegetation will be attractive to certain kinds of adaptable wildlife that will make a home in its embrace, and raise young there as well.