Why Landfills Are Unexpected Birding Goldmines

Birding can take you to some weird places, like the landfill! Today we're birding around the Johnson Creek Landfill in Wisconsin to see what cool gull species we can find.

Special thanks to our members Liz McQuaid, Sarah Coffey, Barbara Cole, Chris Slagle, Sally, and Sarah!

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Panasonic LUMIX FZ80 4K Digital Camera
Used for most bird videos) - check credits as we do source some photos/videos elsewhere which is noted in the description

Cayer FP2450 Fluid Head Tripod, 75 inches Aluminium Tripod
Derek's lighter tripod

Andoer Video Tripod Aluminum Alloy 67 Inch
Derek's heavier tripod

Nikon D5300
Derek's vlogging and macro camera

Rode VideoMicPro Compact Directional On-Camera Microphone
Derek's external microphone for Nikon D5300

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LBBG in cover image by Blondinrikard Fröberg (CC by 2.0, edited)

All other photos and videos by Derek and Ryan Sallmann

#Birding #BirdWatching #BadgerlandBirding

[lemans]

I hauled non-hazordous solid waste as a tractor trailer driver. The amount of birds in those landfills is STAGGERING. I can see Bald Eagles perched just a couple of feet from my truck.

[timjozwiak]

Gulls are hard to id. Seasonal plumage, yearly difference, slight difference. Thank you for your tips and suggestions.😊

[kathrynclark]

We birded Brownsville Tx Dump with Wildside Nature Tours. An awesome experience Thanks for sharing your visit

[janetdierker]

The municipal dump in Brownsville TX is the only place in CONUS where you can find the Mexican crow. The nearby meat processing plant in Kingsville was great for a variety of raptors.

[colettejungbluth]

On a trip to Southern Argentina the local dump was an eBird hotspot to view the White-throated caracara! In fact it is listed on the Merlin app as one of the best locations to see this bird!

[pauraque]

The settling ponds next to the dump is a mythic combo.

[sieranystrom]

Lol! Today I birded (gulled?) along an aquaduct that's adjacent to a composting facility where gulls congregate! (Got my lifer GLGU there a few years ago.) We stopped by the sewage ponds on our way home. My husband always says, "This will be hard to explain to our friends..." Haha. Thanks for sharing!

[markshen]

Good morning 🌅 to both of you from Hong Kong 🇭🇰 SAR. Just two days ago, while walking along the mangrove hedges next to the beachfront promenade, I spotted two 2️⃣ Brown Shrikes each perching on the tip of their own tree tops. My first ‘LIFER’ on this species. The Browm Shrike is found mainly in Asia. What an exciting day it was, and I thought that what I saw in late December 2024, the Long Tailed Shrike ( my ‘Lifer’ that year) was the only Shrike in Asia.

[donalexander]

I’m forever dragging my wife to swamps, sewage treatment plants, and dumps to look at birds. I kid her asking if she had any idea what she was getting into when she said, “I do.” I also take her to a lot of beautiful sites, too.

[michaelsimko]

The attitude of Gulls, along with their tradition for being serious scavengers, makes me love watching them and giving them food. They're great entertainers and make me laugh while they fight over food and territory and get crazy with food items. Ring-billed Gulls and Laughing Gulls are very good at hovering just above and catching food that I toss up to them. I've seen plenty of adult Herring Gulls being dominant over food and space, causing them the get very vocal and aggressive towards other Gulls. I've even seen dominant Herring Gulls grab a hold of the bill, wing, tail, or leg of another Herring Gull. I've also seen Gulls play tug-of-war with a large piece of food. The way larger Gulls stab and shake large sources of food makes me enjoy watching them.

[agentblackbird]

Funnily enough my Kohl’s also often has gulls at its parking lot in winter

[Vegavis]

I worked at a dump one summer doing gull control, of all things. Not surprised they didn't let you in; it's not super safe.

[AllAmericanPlaneSpotter]

Its so true. I found a Slaty backed Gull and a Glaucous Gull in Michigan at a dump 😂❤

[jamescady]

Cool! Smelly, but cool!!! 😄 Actually, I never considered the landfill! Smart.

[motherlandbot]

If your goal is spotting max numbers of species in an excursion, landfills have their pluses. They still attract huge numbers of a relatively small number of species, though this is also true for some migration sites.

Before WNV was introduced to NA, American Crows and NA Herring Gulls where superabundant at our local NE landfills. They were also a good place to spot Fish Crows.

From an ecologist's perspective, landfills are a place to observe ongoing evolution to synanthropy, and the consequent inflation of populations of some NATIVE species far beyond what existed in precolonial times, and often to the detriment of other native species.

I first spotted a Glaucous Gull flying high over a Common Tern nesting colony on a barrier island off Long Island's South Shore. This gull species is still an uncommon sight (they face ecological competition from more abundant Greater Black Backs), but Common Terns are incapable of benefitting from landfills or other forms of Human habitat alteration. For many different reasons, their populations in that area have gradually but steadily declined, along with those of many other shorebirds. Meanwhile, species that benefit from landfills also face tradeoffs between population boosts at the expense of average individual longevity; little ongoing research is and has been conducted on the effects of exposure to harmful products at landfills on scavenging birds and their predators and scavengers has been conducted.

[mm]

Landfills and Water Treatment Plants 👍😅

[Florafauneando]

Interesting bird watching, the dumps always attract gulls and some other opportunistic birds.
The audio track made it effortless for me to watch, although it always sounds artificial; the strangest thing about this was that sometimes the speed of speech accelerated and on one occasion Derek came out translated in a woman's voice!

[ABirdersParadise]

I would have never picked out a Glaucous from that distance. That many gulls and it's a nightmare trying to ID them for someone who mainly only sees Ring-billed, and sometimes California and Herring. 😂

[lindap]

Gulls are not my favorite. When a Glaucous Gull was reported at Log Boom Park on Lake Washington, I decided against chasing it even though it is only a mile or so from my house. Despite my ho-hum attitude I added a new "Life Bird" when I saw a large PURE white gull on a lamp post at McDonalds, there was no doubt in my mind that this was the Gull birders had been coming from near & far to see. I was amazed at how white it was in comparison to the rest of the gulls around.

[ntw_luke]

The only thing you fellas were missing was a bag of ketchup potato chips, and it would have been a perfect dump day