I spy Fern Dell.

People, I got up at 7:30 AM on Sunday!!!

No, not for yard sales. I got an email from George Grace, who founded the Griffith Park Natural History Survey, that a group of people were getting together to participate in the Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count in Griffith Park.

Now, I’ve been a bird watcher since I was 5 and set up a trap of a shoe box and string and a popsicle stick on our front lawn to try to capture a robin. I still remember crying hopelessly the next morning when I found out it had rained and ruined my shoe box and hopes of a robin of my own. When I was older I would come home from school, have a snack, and get my father’s old binoculars to watch the neighbor’s bird feeder for an hour. Our neighbor, Mrs. Tinsley, lived in a remarkable big pink house. (well, remarkable in the Northeast. Who paints their house pink back there?) Neighbors on our very nice street kept pretty much to themselves – well, all the time, really. So I was astounded when Mrs. Tinsley came over one day to give me a big bird book and a record of bird calls. I didn’t know she was watching me watch her birds! I think she wanted to give me more bird things, but Dad put the kibosh on that because, well, I might have become spoiled.

I’m loving this picture. I only took 2 or 3, so this is great. It’s like an Egyptian frieze or a tableau of birders, all doing the same thing in different ways. Click to enlarge.

Los Angeles isn’t much on birds, unfortunately. I remember reading an earnest article in the Boston Globe on a new variety of bird spotted there. It got a lot of space in the features section! And in Philadelphia the Inquirer used to list an annual schedule of when to expect each bird species to reappear each spring, , which was pretty accurate, and fun to follow. They often had articles on which seed or food to attract which birds. Ever seen anything like this in the LA Times? I think not.

I’m a solitary, casual watcher. I’ve almost always put up bird feeders wherever I live, carry binoculars on day trips, and that’s about it. But when I lived in Los Feliz, even casual watching stopped. There were NO birds on Vermont, outside of a handful: house finches, the occasional crow, and a humming bird who once flew in my 3rd floor apartment, because of my flowered curtains, I suspect. The dirt was so poor that my manager said there were no worms (not something I tested out), and I guess not many other insects. I was excited to find out the Griffith Park Bird Sanctuary was just a short hike up the hill, but never had much luck spotting anything there, either, although in other places of the park, I saw my first blue bird, a blue heron!, Canada geese and others, and I enjoy seeing birds from my windows on this tree-lined street where I live now.

I knew about the yearly Audubon bird count, of course, and have been curious, but this is the first time I decided to go for it. George said our leader would be Dan Cooper, which sounded interesting, but part of the fun of bird watching is making your own discovery, looking it up in the bird book, and checking it off in the personal bird list, which you can find in every single bird book, with checkmarks by the O/C of us! So I wasn’t sure what it would be like with an ornithologist leading the way.

I’ve only driven through Fern Dell once or twice; it’s adjacent to the AFI on Western. I knew we’d have to go deep into the woods to find any birds, so I packed a backpack with my binoculars, chocolate, water, jacket, etc. And set that damn alarm. Well, I was a couple of minutes late, because I wasn’t sure where to park that was near our meeting spot, but the group was still there, just a few yards from the cars. And Dan was pointing out bird after bird after flock, so we just stayed in the same spot for 20 minutes. None of that laborious hiking for us!

Actually, we only walked maybe 3 blocks the whole count, and were always within sight of the street. Dan pointed out that as soon as the sun hit portions of the ground for a few minutes, the insects would start to stir there, and that brought the birds. I had never thought of that before. Yet in the small territory we covered, we (following Dan) saw 31 different SPECIES of birds, including hawks, woodpeckers pecking, towhees literally scratching away leaves with their tiny feet, ravens (bigger crows), thrushes, tits and wrens, all of which we added to the national Audubon bird count. (Fern Dell didn’t burn in the fire, so of course birds and wildlife were not affected.)

I wasn’t surprised that Dan could identify all the birds, as that is his job, but the fact that he could see and hear them, with each individual call, was impressive. I asked him if he thought he could see better than most people, and he said, “I know I can.” He can even hear hummingbirds fly!! He said he didn’t expect to see many today, however, as they only come out when it’s above 50 degrees. Kristin Sabo, who takes care of Amir’s Garden in the park, and took care of the other gardens, too, before they burned in the fire, said that there are tons of hummingbirds at Amir’s, and she found one that looked dead or frozen in the cold. She carried it around in her hand for a while, and what do you know, it came back to life, and eventually just flew away! I love happy stories like this!!

I asked Dan how he knew we weren’t seeing the same birds over and over as we counted them. He said they were territorial, which I knew, and didn’t stray from certain areas. But I had always thought territorial was more about fighting, but really it’s about living. He said many birds lived their whole lives within a couple square blocks, and some birds, like the towhees, who spent most of their time on the ground, tipping over leaves to find insects, lived in 200 square feet, and their young lived only a few feet further from them! I had thought about the reptiles and small mammals forced out of their homes in agony during the fire, if they didn’t burn alive, but I hadn’t known that even the birds, who we think of as freedom fighters, would have gone through such anguish trying to find new places.

We saw some low stone walls that were apparently built for flood control in the depression. (No worry about that this year.) One of the guys said that he had found a dead mountain lion nearby, and had called the park rangers. The Chief Ranger was with us, and they both laughed. I said, it wasn’t a real mountain lion, was it? (earlier post proving there are no mountain lions in Griffith Park!) They said no, it was a big dog. A really really big dog, a mastiff, about 150 pounds. The Ranger added that they got someone with a metal detector to go over it, and they found 2 bullets in his head. Putting aside the odd fact that the park uses a metal detector to investigate dead creatures, isn’t that a sweet thing. Some lowclass degenerate who decides he doesn’t want to feed the beast that he had raised from a pup, or adopted, decides it’s too much trouble to find a home for it, so he kills it. Wonder what type of people that could be… And then leaves it in a public park for walkers and children to find.

To end on a happier note, my first birdwatching group was tons of fun. Afterwards, the Trails Cafe is right there in the park, a small shack, and has a reputation for good vegetarian food and all baked goods from scratch. I tried Chocolate Cake with Lavendar. Good in theory, but it was stale, so maybe I’ll try the recommended avocado sandwich next time. Dan said he plans to do other walks soon, and maybe change the time to the afternoon for any late risers! Be sure to drop a note to George at the link above or in my blogroll, if you want to be a part of it.

PS. We never once talked in whispers, nor did Dan tell us to shush! Another myth down the drain.

Update: Here’s our adventure in Dan’s own words, with complete list of birds!