A Baillon’s crake – credit, I Am Birds as Poetry, via Flickr Every time a toilet in Melbourne flushes, the contents start a long trip from the metro area to a sewage treatment plant that has garnered a mythical reputation among birdwatchers.

Following the treatment process, the government allows it to retain certain excess nutrients that cause microbes and insects to flourish—anchoring the food web in an area of marsh and mudflats that birds just love.

300 different species of birds, including endangered species like the orange bellied parrot have been recorded in the Western Treatment Plant, on the shores of Phillips Bay, in Victoria state.

In the paddies, visiting birdwatchers can see the brolga, a crane common in the neighboring Queensland, but endangered in Victoria. Above, squadrons of seabirds and raptors ply the skies looking for food or nesting grounds, and shorebirds eagerly wade, hope, an skitter along man-made mudflats gobbling up tasty morsels.

50 billion gallons of sewage and wastewater flow through the plant’s 32 huge lagoons. Some are anaerobic, or oxygen deprived treatment lagoons where harmful bacteria are expunged and beneficial bacteria, which breakdown the sewage, matter are cultivated.

Oxygenated, or aerobic lagoons then work on the wastewater to reduce the levels of nitrogen—a compound common in human sewage that enriches harmful algae which can grow exponentially on the stuff if too much of it were to make it into the bay—the final destination of the water having passed through the other lagoons where it enriches the life.

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“The water that goes out into the bay at the end result of the sewage treatment process does still have a lot of nutrient in it,” Cody McCormack, conservation and land officer with Melbourne Water, told the Guardian Australia on its visit to the Western Treatment Plant.

That nutrient is left over on purpose—to anchor the biodiversity at the site, but men and women like McCormack have the job of making sure it’s never so much as to cause an algal bloom. McCormack is a birdwatcher himself, and loves the shorebirds in particular.

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“The nutrient in the water provides the food for the insects and for the vegetation to grow as well,” says McCormack. “It’s one of the most annoying things in my role, where I’m lowering these ponds to create these beautiful mudflats for shorebirds, but as soon as you expose the mud, there’s so much nutrient in the water that all the vegetation grows up.”

Birdwatchers can apply for access to a gate key on the active industrial site, and a few are given out to the community of Melbourne birders. A short flight over to Flickr and a search for “Western Treatment Plant” reveals the wealth of species these birders enjoy seeing and photographing.

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