Cattle Egrets (Bubulcus ibis) Control the Population of House Flies (Musca domestica) in Garbage Dumping Sites: A Comparison between Two Garbage Dumping Sites, Kandy, Sri Lanka

House flies spread many communicable diseases such as cholera, dysentery and spreadparasitic infections. Therefore, it is important to control house flies at garbage dumping sitesas they are a rich source of disease agents. Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis) is one of the commonwetland birds in Sri Lanka, often seen foraging on flies at garbage dumping sites. Referringto the preliminary observations reported before, two garbage dumping sites were selectedfrom Kandy district.Digana garbage dumping site (7.260 N 80.740 E) was selected as a Cattle Egret occupied siteand Panvila garbage dumping site (7.220 N 80.430 E) was selected as the control site whereno Cattle Egrets were recorded. The adult house flies (Musca domestica) were counted whichrandom quadrate sampling twice a month for 5 min. Birds were counted from 08:00 to 10:00hrs by point count method with a binocular. Cattle Egrets, Crows, Common Mynahs, SpottedDoves, Green bee-eaters, House Sparrows, Black Robins, Indian Pond Herons and AsianPalm Swifts were identified as bird species in Digana garbage dumping site and onlyCommon Mynas, Spotted Doves and Asian Palm Swifts were observed in Panvila site. Astrong correlation between populations of Cattle Egrets and house flies was observed in theDigana garbage dumping site (<0.05). Since major food item of Cattle Egret is insects, theyare attracted to waste dumping site, which provides abundant dipterans maggots at lowenergy expenditure. However, the house fly population was significantly high in Panvila sitethan Digana site as Cattle Egrets were not observed in Panvila site. Also In both sites, nocorrelation was observed between populations of other bird species and population of houseflies (0.05<). During breeding season, the Cattle Egrets were observed to be migrating awayfrom the Digana site and were not recorded in late June. No Cattle Egrets in July toSeptember were observed in this site. The number of house flies was clearly increased duringthis period and with the return of Cattle Egrets after breeding season the numbers of houseflies decrease dramatically. The present study shows that there is a strong relationshipbetween population of house flies and Cattle Egret abundance.Keywords: Cattle Egrets, Garbage dumping sites, House flie