Thoughts on Nature in LA

The following are thoughts on the natural world in Los Angeles:

The bird life here is great. On one of the Audubon hikes, the guide said this was one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. I was skeptical. After thinking about it, she may be right. Not many places have ocean, wetlands, river, sub-tropical, chaparral, desert, and mountains all crammed into a 30 mile radius.

I have empathy for the weeds. The urban environment is rough. All that concrete. Seldom any rain. Intense sun every day. I feel bad seeing the lawn services spraying them with herbicide. All that struggle to survive cut short because they are the wrong plant for that place.

Hummingbirds are amazing. I used to just see them at our feeder, but once I started paying attention, I see them everywhere. On the bird walks, at the flowering trees at work, catching insects near the concrete channels. It is fun to watch them catch bugs in flight.

I do not care for ficus trees. As a kid, I only ever knew them as parlor trees or trees in homes or office buildings. Usually they looked sightly pallid. At some point here in LA, they decided to line many of the streets with ficuses. They are shallow rooted and tear up every bit of concrete nearby. The sidewalks are an obstacle course thanks to the ficus. They are also not favored by wildlife.

Yesterday, we say a hawk catch a mouse. It was only about 20 ft from us up on a hill right behind a tree. We heard the crash into the leaves and behind the tree just saw flashes of feathers. At first, I thought it was a pheasant because the feathers looked so long. Then it flew off with the mouse clutched in its grasp.

I have seen coots for years, but a week ago was the first time I saw their feet. They have 3 long toes with a beautiful blue hue. How do they swim so well? It seems a duck would have an advantage with all that webbing.

We see lots of lizards when we go hiking. Even in the highly disturbed Baldwin Hills area which is an active oil field. I think they are Great Basin Fence Lizards. One cool thing about these guys is that a protein in their blood kills Lyme disease. It is speculated that may be the reason that Lyme disease is uncommon here. Thank you lizards! http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/0429/lizard.html

The photo guides on this page are great for identifying snakes, lizards, and turtles in the LA area: http://www.californiaherps.com/identification/socalherps.html

The gulls here are not as annoying as along the Texas coast. They keep their distance from humans. It seems they do not associate humans with food an therefore we can live in peaceful harmony. I actually enjoy the gulls and pigeons here.