Taking a group of high school students to visit a landfill, at first blush, seems like a good way to learn about recycling.

Taking a group of students to the Grand Central Sanitary Landfill in Pen Argyl, a 537.5-acre facility, has an added bonus: Students can learn about restoring wildlife habitat.

Instead of worrying about the old garbage-in, garbage-out philosophy, visitors to the environmental education center at Grand Central can learn how properly capped landfills can help create a natural habitat that, while not perfect, helps restore vegetation and wildlife to what used to be known as a garbage dump.

Grand Central, which is owned by Waste Management and accepts no hazardous waste materials at its Pen Argyl site, has built an incredible wildlife habitat on 200 acres of its facility to reclaim the land for native and migrant species.

The area already is home to a wide variety of birds and wildlife, and the facility has been adding a variety of bird boxes for different species since 2005, when it first built nine Eastern Bluebird boxes. Two weeks ago, the facility erected a Barn Owl box in a 17-acre cool-season grass field near a bird blind that was built as an Eagle Scout project.

Naturalists are working on identifying a potential blue grosbeak nest, which if found, would be the most northeastern blue grosbeak nest in the country.

One of the bragging points of the nature habitat is a 24-acre warm-season grass area planted in 2007 on a former corn field that includes switchgrass, black-eyed Susans, Indiangrass and a variety of others.

Warm-season grasses are crucial for ground foraging and nesting birds. These grasses reach deep into the ground with their root systems and can sustain extended drought and wintering.

Switchgrass in particular provides ideal cover for ground-nesting birds such as pheasants, although that isn't the priority of the nature habitat.

So far, the nature habitat has drawn a wide variety of butterflies and birds thanks to the abundant mix of foliage and bird boxes. Local Boy Scouts have built 67 bluebird boxes, three American kestrel boxes and two wood duck boxes.

A recent trip to the facility saw the wood ducks with their beaks in the water and their tails skyward in one of the ponds on the property.

The facility also is home to tree swallows, Savannah sparrows, grasshopper sparrows and other birds, including of course the area's biggest scavenger, the turkey vulture.

According to Adrienne Borger, the community relations coordinator for the facility, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary banded some of the turkey vultures and found out the ones that frequent Grand Central are the fattest birds in the area, not because they gorge themselves on the refuse, but because they hover on the rising heat created by the gas-to-energy Green Knight Energy Center. The updraft from the heat allows the birds to be less active to remain airborne; less active means fatter birds.

Since 2006, more than 2,300 people have completed educational programs or attended nature events at the facility.

In 2007, the landfill received Wildlife at Work certification by the Wildlife Habitat Council and has since been recognized by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for the implementation of a grassland management plan and the creation of its environmental education center. The completion of that center allowed Grand Central to receive Corporate Lands for Learning certification from WHC last year.

Grand Central provides tours of its nature facility for schools and community groups. To learn more about the tours, call Borger at 610-863-2398.