This week I got another e-mail from one of our scientists. This time it was from Kimball Garrett, our amazing Ornithology Collections Manager. He found another bird for our Exposition Park bird list, and my isn't it cute? Here's Kimball's communique from October 3rd at 1:24pm:
"All,
Canada Warbler, Cardellina canadensis [= Wilsonia canadensis] along the south edge of the Rose Garden just now. First for the park, and brings the wood-warbler (Parulidae) list for the park up to 22 species and the park list to 171 species. Sorry, no photos obtained."
But wait, Kimball, never to be outdone by a bird, sent me this e-mail at 4:38pm that same day:
"Lila,
I went back out late this afternoon and had much better studies of the Canada Warbler and managed to get a few (lousy) photos. Here's one:"
Late last week, Kimball Garrett, NHM's Ornithology Collections Manager, spotted a new species for our Exposition Park bird list...drum roll please!
It was an Indigo Bunting, Passerina cyanea. Although Kimball had his camera with him, he was unfortunatley unable to snap a picture. Here is an image of a male Indigo Bunting, so you can at least get a sense of what they look like.
The Indigo Bunting is a migratory songbird that breeds commonly in the Central and Eastern United States and adjacent Canada, and in small numbers west to Arizona. A few have summered and bred in Southern California, but the handful of Indigos that turn up annually in Los Angeles County are presumed to be off-course migrants.
A male seen in the xeric garden south of the California Science Center on June 1, 2012 was the first to be found in Exposition Park; the Indigo’s close relative, the Lazuli Bunting (P. amoena), is occasionally noted as a migrant in the park, mainly in August and September (as can be seen from the seasonal bar charts based on data from the eBird website). A third member of the genus Passerina, the Blue Grosbeak (P. caerulea) has been recorded only once, in May.
In addition to the brilliant blue plumage of the male, Indigo Buntings gained fame as the subject of pioneering studies of celestial navigation by night-migrating songbirds by Stephen Emlen in the late 1960s . Emlen placed caged buntings in a planetarium setting to study the directionality of their migratory responses when exposed to both accurate and manipulated celestial cues. Although we now know that star patterns are important in the navigation of such migrants, the occasional appearance of an individual well away from its normal geographical range shows that such navigation is not without errors!
It never fails. Every year we have the same problem with dumpster divers. No it's not the hipster artist looking for obscure objects for his next sculpture, and it isn't the local freegan looking for her next luncheon. It's actually Western Gulls, Larus occidentalis.
Here's an image I captured on my way back from lunch on my smartphone.
It follows the same routine every weekday. Soon after the field trippers have exited the building they descend to the lawns and eat their lunches. About this time the gulls appear in a massive flock, like a reenactment of Hitchcock's, The Birds. The gulls around here are not as aggressive as others I've seen on my high school campus in the Inland Empire, or those at Seaworld that literally snatch burgers out of patrons' hands! Instead the gulls of Exposition Park wait for our school children to "finish" their packed lunches and put them in the trash. Soon after the gulls go to work on the overflowing trash cans. Garbage is strewn left, right, and center as the gulls are looking for a tasty morsel. All those half eaten sandwhiches, leftover lunchables, and wayward McDonald's French fries, are consumed and the packaging is left behind as an unsightly reminder of the carnage.
The Western gull’s willingness to consider our trash its treasure illustrates a common trait of urban animals. Creatures who are able to thrive once their native habitats have been altered by humans do so in large part because they are adaptable. While bears and mountain lions have been pushed to the fringes of the city, animals that make the most of what is around them become successful urbanites. If you’re willing to eat trash—a plentiful commodity in urban settings—you’ve got a lot more options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!
Have you seen any wildlife dumpster divers in your neighborhood?
If you read the previous post, you already know the basic idea of the North Campus. Now let's talk more about citizen science. We have three citizen science projects, what we like to call Community Science, that anyone can participate in. They are the Los Angeles Spider Survey, Lost Lizards of Los Angeles (aka LLOLA), and the Lost Ladybug Project which we host in partnership with Cornell University. All these projects help us collect data about what's living here in L.A. today. For instance, recently a LLOLA participant found a new lizard lounging in the Chatsworth area of L.A. Now when I say this lizard was lounging, I'm serious, they hang out by porch lights and wait for flying insects to be attracted. When a moth, or some other unsuspecting insect flies in, the lizard pounces and gobbles up the delicious treat. These Mediterranean House Geckos had never been found in L.A. County before, so it was a new record for science, and discovered by a tween no less!
Immature Mediterranean House Gecko, found by LLOLA participant Reese Bernstein and family.
