Dear Tweeters,

I cannot resist adding to the discourse on this topic.


In the Middle East, some of the best birding is around
places full of camel dung. The dung of the camel comes
out in hard, rather dry pieces, about the size and
shape of a marshmallow.

Various larks can almost always be found around goodly
deposits of these droppings. They poke and push at the
dung, apparently extracting undigested seeds, as well
as insects. I believe dung beetle larvae may be
involved, even though the adult beetles seem to be
noxious--I have never seen a bird eat one of the big
black dung beetles of the Middle East.

Species that do this include Desert Lark,
Black-crowned Finch Lark, and Crested Lark.

Sometimes the dung attracts flies. Then there are all
sorts of birds swooping down to eat them--Pale Crag
Martin, Blackstart, and so forth.

Two other things that attract birds in the Arabian
deserts are water (of course) and dead sheep. The
insects swarming around the sheep carcasses never fail
to bring in the birds!

Happy to be back birding in more pleasant climes,
Gary Bletsch
garybletsch at yahoo.com
near Lyman, WA



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