Birds at Seneca Meadows

This picture of a truck dumping its garbage load into a landfill was taken during my drive-by of Seneca Meadows this past weekend. From this picture, I considered a few options about what angle I wanted to use for my next blog post. After careful consideration, I thought the birds flying over the landfill, and more specifically over the truck in mid-action, was an interesting and relevant topic to discuss.

Although my skills in the field of ornithology are limited, I was able to discover some of the threats birds pose for waste-management facilities and the local environment during my brief research on birds and landfills.

An interesting problem that birds can cause for landfills is blocking the vision of bulldozer operator’s as they compact and roll over the garbage, and can disrupt a basic operation for a landfill. In terms of environmental reasons for keeping birds out of a landfill, birds that feed at the face of a landfill have the ability to transfer noxious material to residential areas and harm the health of the local environment.