Rich Food Pickings

I doubt anybody would volunteer to pass through an area where the smell is so pungent and nauseating it causes headaches.

However, my love for birds and some semi-official duties related to monitoring bird flu takes me to the Dubai Municipality sewage treatment plant near International City.

The most horrible place in the plant is the vast field where the treated sewage lies – a semi-solid sludge which, when dry, turns into first-class organic fertiliser, locally called samad.

Insects, especially beetles, love it. They lay eggs that soon grow to larvae. These are the largest summer food supplies for the many birds which swarm like bees on the sludge.

I think so much food is available that several hundred birds, belonging to nearly a dozen or so species, do not feel the need to fight.

There seems to be cool competition between various species gathered over a plot of sludge. Each group keeps close to its own kind and avoids larger species.

I think so much food is available that several hundred birds, belonging to nearly a dozen or so species, do not feel the need to fight.

I enjoy watching birds here. No other local birdwatcher has permission to enter this plant because of the health and safety risks.