Down in the dumps

March 27, 2023 a-roving the birds and the trees

Texas Roadtrip, Part 5: After leaving the amazing birding hotspots in McAllen, Texas,
we headed east to the Gulf Coast. We stayed overnight in Brownsville,
with the intention of making an early morning visit to the local dump.

UFGs: Unidentified Flying Gulls

Terns and tacos

Our birding adventure in Brownsville began with trying in vain to identify the dozens of birds — gulls? terns? what kind? — that were flying around over the parking lot at our hotel. I was persuaded that they were terns, but the details in Merlin didn’t quite match. And, frankly, I’m not good with these birds — they all look alike to me!

Anyway, from there we drove out to the dump —  excuse me: the “Brownsville Sanitary Landfill” — for a spot of birding recon. From the gate, we could see an enormous cloud (swarm? throng? multitude?) of birds circling in the air above the vast trash mountain. This was clearly the place. The site was about to close, but the guys at the gate told us they’d reopen the next morning at 7 a.m. — and to bring tacos!

It was surely a joke, but we weren’t taking any chances. So in the morning we made a stop at Laredo Taco in the local Stripes mini-market-cum-gas station. One of the volunteers at the Santa Ana Refuge had told me that Laredo had good tacos, so we set aside our skepticism and stopped.

It turned out he was right: Laredo is owned by 7-Eleven, and these quick-eats stands are incorporated into Stripes and 7-Eleven stores all over Texas. The food is fresh and the flour tortillas made in house. For us it was a tasty and inexpensive breakfast as well as a convenient bribe — which, of course, was not needed, but the offering put us in the good graces of the landfill guards.

These custodians gave us neon-orange safety vests and directions, with the sole admonition that we stay away from the active areas of the dump. And so we set off.

The Brownsville Sanitary Landfill

Old joke:

Q: Where does the Lone Ranger take his garbage?
A: To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump dump! (Sing it!)

So why exactly had we decided to visit the Brownsville dump? Well, birds — some birds, anyway — love fresh garbage, so a dump is a logical spot to look for them. And the Brownsville site is one of the few dumps open to birders: no sneaking around required.

Brownsville was one of the few major landfills anywhere that still admitted birders; most insurers and city attorneys refused to let passenger cars share a dump road with trash haulers en route to their honey hole. But Brownsville was a border town anxious to promote nonborder businesses. If birdwatchers wanted to spend their tourism dollars pointing $1,000 binoculars at heaping mounds of trash, the city elders here weren’t about to block their view. (Mark Obmascik, The Big Year)

Moreover, the Brownsville landfill is widely recognized as a prime location for spotting vagrant gulls (i.e., gulls that have strayed outside their normal range) and the Tamaulipas crow, a Mexican crow that has not been seen any further north than this dump. So birders in search of these rarities are regular visitors here. But for us, the interest was not so much in spotting life-list birds (neither Craig nor I keep a life list) but in visiting a place that constitutes almost a pilgrimage site for the serious birder.

Mount Trashmore

Birders usually pay a high price for the privilege of visiting the Brownsville dump. Obmascik explains:

To say [the dump] stunk did injustice to the work stunk. It reeked. It rotted. It marinated decades of throwaway table scraps in the fecund humidity of the Rio Grande Valley and then roasted it under the south Texas sun. It smelled so bad it made grown men cry. 

On the day of our visit, however, we discovered a silver lining to the strong, cold winds that had been plaguing us for the past couple of days: they completely blew away the stench of the dump! We smelled… nothing. Huzzah!

Our first stop was a small pond not far from the entrance, where a number of gulls were gathered, along with a crested caracara, a distinctive raptor that I had not yet had the chance to photograph.

We also spotted a turkey vulture along the road. They’re quite common, and we usually see them in the air, looking for an updraft. Ever since I saw a cartoon in our local Wild Birds Unlimited store with the below text (source unknown), turkey vultures make me chuckle.

We drove on around the mounded landfill, then parked and scrambled to the top. From there we could see the active area behind a fence a good distance away. The sight made me catch my breath: hundreds and thousands of birds — mostly gulls of various persuasions — covered the ground and filled the air, shrieking and wheeling above and around the workers. Hitchcock would have loved this scene! These photos do not do it justice.

A laughing gull carries away his prize.

All in all, our dump visit did not yield us much in the way of new species; had we been more diligent in trying to tell one gull from another, we might have done better. But for me the real interest was in seeing the breathtaking numbers of birds to be found in this one place — and being briefly part of the larger flock of birders who go to such lengths (and put up with such stinks!) to pursue their passion.

Here’s to the myriad pleasures of birding:
often it’s about meeting new birds in beautiful settings,
but sometimes it’s about tasty tacos, welcome winds, and
being with birds in a place that they like more than we do!

Connections
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1 thought on “Down in the dumps”
  1. Patrick Erwin

    I think you and Craig are real birder folks to be able to put up with the rotten environment, which for me would after seeing one of the gulls or its look alikes would have been,”hasta luego,” birdies.
    I’m in constant admiration of you two and especially your willingness this time to to go into the heart of Stenchville for us all.
    Love, Patrick

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