An Oasis of Habitat in Los Angeles

Food, water and shelter–these are the three requirements for all living things. Provide them in your yard and you will create a vital oasis for wildlife.

Taking a suggestion from The California Wildlife Habitat Garden by Nancy Bauer (book review), last weekend I planted a drift of milkweed (Asclepias curassavica). This species of milkweed (also called “blood flower” according the Western Garden Book) is actually native to South America, however it is the easiest species of milkweed to find at garden centers. I planted five plants on a slope, between some native sage and California fuchsia.
 

caterpillar on the underside of leaf

Milkweed is a host plant for monarch butterflies and apparently my plants came with tiny caterpillars already on them. I found the inch-and-a-half-long caterpillar, pictured above, on the underside of a leaf. (Yellow arrow points to leaf with the caterpillar just visible on the underside.) Because the caterpillars eat the plant leaves, placing several plants together in a “drift” creates a sustainable habitat for the future butterflies.

 

young white-crowned sparrow in background

This week we also had migratory birds arrive. Three white-crowned sparrows flew in: an adult and two youngsters. I would love to know if the adult is one of the white-crowns that spent the winter here last year. This small family of white-crowns has arrived about a 2 weeks earlier than in past years. I thought they might be traveling through, but they have stayed all week.

 

'sooty' fox sparrow

A second sparrow species, a ‘sooty’ fox sparrow arrived on Friday. 

This is the first time we’ve had a fox sparrow in the yard since 2000. It seems to have settled in, searching for food under the coffeeberry and hollyleaf and Catalina cherries. The native plants provide habitat that other plants do not.

Especially in the dry weather, the water in the bird bath and the fountain provide much needed water for migrating and local birds. Even birds of prey need a drink in hot weather.

It always amazes me when these migrating visitors stop in our yard. How do they find us? Do they see other birds going in and out of the yard? Do they hear or see the running water in the fountain? Are they attracted to the reptiles or native insects?

Do the butterflies smell the bloom of their favorite plants? This morning a bright yellow butterfly traveled through the yard investigating the milkweed and the flowering mallow. In the past, we have occasionally seen monarch butterflies. Perhaps with our addition of the milkweed we will become a habitat oasis for these butterflies as well.

The Juncos Have Arrived

The Oregon juncos arrived today. Amazingly, they are only a day earlier than last year. The two males arrived thirsty and spent some time drinking at the bird bath, which is rather unusual for them. These two males have been winter residents for the past couple of years. There will be other groups with males and females, but these two males arrive first and they always seem to be together. More on that later.

The white-crowned sparrows should be here within the week.

Warblers and Weather

Something is in the air. It isn’t just autumn and it isn’t just smoke from the Station Fire. (Which is still burning in the Angeles Forest).

We are seeing a number of migratory bird species that we typically do not see in autumn:

• Cassin’s kingbird (previously 12/06)
• warbling vireo (previously 4/07)
• Wilson’s warbler (annually, February and May)
• black-headed grosbeak (annually, April to early August)

If it were just one unusual siting, I wouldn’t think much of it. A Wilson’s warbler arrived last week. After seeing it in the yard, I later found it sitting on the window sill. It seemed exhausted and gagging on our smoke-filled air. I easily scooped it up and brought it inside for a few hours. It was out of my cage in a moment, (they are smaller than you think), and it spent the day sleeping perched on a quiet bookshelf. In the late afternoon, we opened the window and gently shooed it out.

I was thrilled, this morning when three warbling vireos passed through the yard. They stopped for food and water. But it made me start to wonder: Why are we seeing these birds?

Would they usually stop in the Angeles Forest and they’ve found the habitat they depended on gone? All of the birds I have been seeing are species that have been here in our yard before, just at different times of the year. Are they individuals that remember this place?

But, none of these birds have been ash-covered. Two years ago following the large fires to the north of us, birds migrating south that stopped here were covered in ash, exhausted and hungry. Every time a new group arrived, we had a to clean the film of ash out of the bird bath. That isn’t happening.

When I looked at my past bird logs, I found that September of 2005 also had a variety of birds, migratory and non, that were unusual: a Costa’s hummingbird, house wren, song sparrow pair, brown-headed cowbird, a very late hooded oriole, and a black-headed grosbeak. The black-headed grosbeak made me wonder about the weather in 2005.

But the September weather in Woodland Hills in 2005 had a median low of 56˚F and a median high of 85.5˚F, while this year, 2009, the temperatures have been much higher: median low 62˚F and median high 95˚F. The winter of 2005 was cool, but dry. That isn’t what we are hoping for this winter.

Another marker of 2005 was that the white-crowned sparrows arrived very early. Rather than mid to late October, the white-crowns arrived on September 30th. It will be interesting to see when they return this year. 2008 white-crowns return

The meteorologists are predicting a wet El Nino year. Do the birds know better? Are we in for another cool, but dry winter?