The Suburban Naturalist

Cover via Amazon

I’m reading a great book right now called Crow planet : essential wisdom from the urban wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.  It’s about crows, obviously, but more than that it’s about staying connected to the wild even when you have to live in a less-than-wild place.

Suburban southern California isn’t the wildest place around, but it’s where I live and for better or worse, it’s the habitat I grew up in and am adapted to.  The creatures that share this habitat aren’t as glamorous as the wolves and lions and orangutans that inhabit the “wild” parts of the world but they are just as resourceful and just as determined to survive.

The non-domesticated mammals around here are mostly nocturnal but I have seen them: raccoons, skunks, opossums.  We probably have coyotes in the general area, but not right in my neighborhood — there are too many long lived feral cats living here; they would not live long if this was part of a coyote’s territory.

Birds are much more visible, and we have a good variety within walking distance of my house:

• American Crow
• House Sparrow
• House Finch
• European Starling
• Cattle Egret
• Turkey Vulture
• Bushtit
• Yellow-rumped Warbler
• Northern Mockingbird
• Red-tailed Hawk

Go a little further afield and you will find Black-necked Stilts, Common Ibis, Common Egret, Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron, Canada Goose, Red-winged Blackbird, Common Grackle, Mallard, Brewer’s Blackbird, Scrub Jay, Anna’s Hummingbird, California Gull, Broad-shouldered Hawk, Golden Eagle, California Quail, Brown Towhee, American Goldfinch, Acorn Woodpecker and many more.  These are just the birds I commonly see from time to time while driving around or walking at the botanic garden.

I do have to wonder: do other people notice these fellow denizens of our scruffy-around-the-edges habitat?  Do they just see a black bird or can they tell the difference between a Crow, a Starling, a Brewer’s Blackbird, and a Grackle?  I hope that they do, but I doubt that many people can.  I feel sorry for them; my world is so much richer and wider and wilder for knowing the names of all these different creatures.

Lions and Tigers and … Racehorses?

While at the Los Angeles Zoo last week my big zoom lens finally gave up the ghost.  The auto-focus had been acting up for quite a while but it refused to work at all at the Zoo, so I had to buy a replacement.  It is exactly the same lens; I wish I could afford to upgrade to a faster one but fast, long lenses are way out of my price range.  This one has served me well since 1993, so I expect the new one will have a long life as well.

Here is the main reason we went to the L.A. Zoo:

Zenyatta on the carousel

Ann and Jerry Moss (owners of my favorite racehorse, Zenyatta) donated the money to build a new conservation carousel at the Zoo and they included carousel horse portraits of three of their best racehorses.  Of course, I had to go ride Zenyatta!

Now I can truly say I have ridden Zenyatta

Yes, there were animals at the Zoo as well.  Despite my struggles with low light and having to manual focus with a handheld long lens, I managed to get some decent photos.  Here is a koala enjoying a meal of eucalyptus leaves.

Koala noms

This fellow was either depressed, very tired or recovering from a hangover.  Whatever the reason for his interesting posture, he certainly brought a smile to my face!

Depressed koala?

The zebras were all dozing in the sun.  One was flat on his side, one was standing up and this one was being adorable all curled up like cat.

Portrait of a zebra

Flamingos are beautiful, big birds but boy, do they STINK! Some brilliant person put a restroom on the hill just next to the flamingo pond (we thought the plumbing was bad, but it was the flamingos).  Admire from a distance! (The birds, not the restroom; no one admires a restroom …)

Feeding flamingos

The new tiger cubs were out!  Mama was sacked out (probably worn out by the kids) but the boys were having a great time playing with a log in a clump of bamboo.  Unfortunately, they were hard to photograph because they are so well camoflaged. I did get one good shot of one brother telling the other to BACK OFF!

Playing tiger cubs

It was getting dark by the time we reached the lion exhibit so my photos aren’t that great, but I did manage to get one of the lioness taking a bath and caught her tongue in mid slurp.

My, what a big tongue you have, Ms.Lion!

Related articles

• LA Zoo Carousel of Endangered Animals (mygrandmasue.wordpress.com)

Leopard Love

Yesterday I went on a VIP tour of The Living Desert with my sister P, her friend L and L’s daughter T.  L & T had received the tour as a gift from another friend who had purchased it at a fundraiser.  All of us have been the The Living Desert before but it’s been several years since the last time we were out there, so we were all excited about it, especially the behind-the-scenes at the leopard exhibit portion.

The leopards in question are a pair of Amur leopards, a male and female, both around 18 years old.  The Living Desert doesn’t breed leopards, and they got both of these cats after their breeding careers were over (the male is neutered).  We got to go into the Commissioner’s House, which is a private party facility not open to the general public.  One entire wall of the Commissioner’s House is made of plate glass, for a perfect view of the leopard enclosure.

Here is the female leopard giving me a very “I am a cat and you are a pitiful human” look.

Male leopard

And here’s the male looking rather hungry.

Here you can see just how close we were to the cats.  This is T taking photos on the other side of the Commissioner’s House (the glass wall is sort of U shaped).

The leopards were very nonchalant about being watched.  The female stopped to wash her paws right in front of me.

Then she plopped down and washed her face.

Amur leopards are so rare that their coats go for close to $1 million on the black market.  I think it looks much better on this beautiful girl, don’t you?

This move is so typical of a cat.  That paw was just the thickness of the plate glass away from me. I put my hand up against it and our “hands” were about the same size.

It’s a good thing that glass was there, because I don’t think I could have resisted tickling this belly!

Meanwhile, across the enclosure, the male was channeling my cat Billy with this “graceful” pose …

Eventually she dozed off …

And so did he.

These gorgeous cats put on quite a show for us (I felt like one of those obnoxious papparazzi the way I was following the female around) before they settled down for a long winter’s nap.  What a wonderful way to begin our VIP tour of The Living Desert!

 

Related articles

• Amur leopard captured on camera in China for first time since 1949 (telegraph.co.uk)
• Persian Leopard Reappears in Afghanistan (naturalhistorywanderings.com)

A Golden Opportunity

Image by grandmasandy+chuck via Flickr

My sister and I were driving just east of the airport today and saw three large, dark birds kettling over an open field.  Our first thought was, of course, turkey vultures, since they are so common around here.  As we got closer, though, the tell-tale white patches under the wings were missing and the birds weren’t teetering on the wind but smoothly riding it.  They were too big to be red-tailed hawks (and too dark) and at least one of them had a white patch in the center of each wing: definitely an immature golden eagle!

It must have been either a mated pair and one juvenile or one adult and two juveniles (it’s  hard to keep track of birds when they’re flying over your moving car).  It’s been a long time since I’ve see eagles around here.  There used to be a pair that hunted in the big open fields just south of Fourth Street, east of Vineyard, but after one was killed by a car several years ago, we stopped seeing them.

We’ve had a new porch visitor in recent weeks, too: a skunk!  I think it’s a juvenile, because it’s rather small.   I know that skunks carry rabies and (obviously) stink, and that raccoons can attack dogs and cats, but still I get a little thrill out of seeing them right outside my front door.  Just knowing that there are raccoons, skunks, opossums, coyotes, owls, eagles, hawks, Canada geese, egrets, rabbits, ground squirrels, and who knows what other creatures out there makes living in the suburbs a little more tolerable.