Dump-chooks and what they collect

In the course of quite a few years working on Five Islands NR I have watched
the breeding antics of four of the aforementioned D-Chooks, ravens, gulls,
pelicans and ibis, as they ferry human waste from Whytes Gully land fill to
their offspring on the island. This leaves new starters on the island to
ponder the hundreds of humeri and femurs of a large galliforme substantially
bigger than the resident Buff-banded Rail. This is, of course, the M.
Donald. The upside is the incredible quantity of fresh vegetables available
to be picked including a range of pumpkins, melons, tomatoes and sundries.
Choko on you’re canned beans survivalists, this cornucopia requires no
weeding, fertilizer or effort as the solid combination of centuries of
nitrogen deposits, decaying offspring, and deep soil meets our staged
removal of kikuyu – a veritable hippy nirvana.

Even better we get to study the changing microbiology of the tip without the
odour:

Oravcova, V., Svec, P. and Literak, I. (2017), Vancomycin-resistant
enterococci with vanA and vanB genes in Australian gulls. Environmental
Microbiology Reports, 9: 316-318. doi:10.1111/1758-2229.12542



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