Melanerpes formicivorus
Unlike most other woodpeckers, an acorn woodpecker is rarely seen on its own. You may hear one before you spot it: Acorn woodpeckers are often encountered in raucous groups, everybody calling YAK-ah, YAK-ah, back and forth.
Dressed boldly in black and white, with large white patches on the rump and each wing, and wearing a red crown, acorn woodpeckers have an outfit few animals can match. Single birds often display to each other by spreading their wings to expose those white patches. Through binoculars, their pale eyes look like sewn-on buttons, giving them a pop-eyed look, like a birthday clown who’s had too much espresso.
These oak specialists focus on acorns, which are gathered and stored by small groups working together. They also breed communally: up to three females may lay eggs within a single nest. After the eggs hatch, other birds act as helpers to care for the young. The helpers are often closely related to the breeding birds they assist—think siblings, aunts, and uncles.
They store their acorns in granaries—hundreds (even thousands) of small holes drilled into trees, phone poles, fences, and buildings. The birds jam acorns into the holes, to be retrieved later. As the acorns dry and shrink, the woodpeckers move them to smaller holes to make it harder for other critters to steal them. When other foods are in short supply, woodpeckers use their stash to remain well fed.
Although acorns form a large part of their diet, they eat other food too. The scientific name formicivorus means ant-eating, and this is indeed one of several woodpecker species that eats ants. They also sally, or charge suddenly, into the air to catch flying insects. Sometimes, they visit seed feeders and even hummingbird feeders.
Acorns grow on oaks—find the trees and you’ll probably find the birds. Trips 1, 2, 8, 14, and 16 are reliable places to start.
Sayornis nigricans
Phoebe numbers are undoubtedly greater now in the LA Basin than they were prior to urbanization. They need mud for nest building, and thanks to how lushly we water urban landscapes, they’ve gotten comfortable in our residential areas and parks.
However, you won’t ever see a flock of black phoebes crowding around. They’re territorial birds that don’t put up with rivals, so you’ll usually see single birds or pairs. Late in the nesting season (May to August), you’ll sometimes also see juveniles accompanying adults as they learn to fly. By fall, though, they’ll have moved on, looking for their own slice of home turf. You can recognize juveniles by the cinnamon-colored bars on each wing.
They’re called phoebes because of their call, which sounds like fee-BEE? Although, if you’re thirsty, you may hear it more like fee-BEER! Actually, the song tends to alternate both phrases—fee-bee?, fee-beer!, fee-bee?, fee-beer!, and so on.
No matter the song, an adult black phoebe’s dress code never varies: black head, back, wings, and tail, and a white belly that reaches up to a point in the center of the breast—like a tiny, fancy tuxedo.
Black phoebes are one of four hundred kinds of flycatchers. These birds hunt by sallying—perching on branches or fence posts, waiting, waiting—then ZIP!—darting off to catch a passing bug and landing nearby to whack the prey into submission and gobble it down. They catch moths, bees, dragonflies, and grasshoppers and will also nab crawling insects or minnows near the surface of a pond. Whiskers around their bills help them sense and catch flying insects.
Phoebe nesting requirements include mud for building and an overhang for shelter. Urban areas, with their constant irrigation and variety of manmade structures, provide an abundance of both. Phoebes embody the phrase, “If you build it, they will come.”
Throughout the LA Basin and up to about 4,000 feet elevation in the foothills, especially in residential areas, well-watered parks and gardens, and near any streams or canyons with standing water. This is not a hard bird to find, and is quite likely at Trips 1, 3, 7, 8, 10, 14, 18, 19, 21, and 24, among others.
Himantopus mexicanus
Black-necked stilts look like baby flamingos dressed up like penguins. To feed, they stalk through shallow water on long, pink legs, ready to jab down with a beak to catch insect larva, tadpoles, or water beetles.
They build their nests just above the water, often on small islands or matted clumps of vegetation at the water’s edge. Typical of ground-nesting shorebirds, this stilt’s sandy-colored, black-speckled eggs (usually a set of four) are remarkably well-camouflaged, but if a would-be predator gets too close to a stilt nest, the adult bird puts on a distraction display. It flies a short distance away and pretends to be injured—diverting attention away from the vulnerable nest. They nest in late spring and summer—runoff from rare summer storms can also be a danger to the eggs.
The best places to find black-necked stilts are usually around other shorebird species—find one, you’ll find others. They turn up in shallow ponds and river margins anywhere in the lowlands but are seen in greatest numbers along the lower LA River. The flow of shallow water through the wide concrete channel creates an ideal platform of sediment and algae, which in turn is home to flies, beetles, and other insects that are tasty treats to hungry, wading shorebirds. They can be seen on Trips 10, 19, 22, and 23, with 23 being a world-class urban birding adventure from June to October.
Psaltriparus minimus
Hiking along the LA River or in our local parks, you might have noticed the bushtit’s distinctive nest—a woven pouch hanging in a large shrub or tree. About ten inches long, it looks like somebody tried to make a bag out of twigs, lichen, and dryer lint. Despite its dirty-sock nest, this dainty bird is one of North America’s busiest songbirds.
Bushtits float through bushes in chittering flocks, inspecting twigs and undersides of leaves for tasty insects. Plain gray, with a tiny ink-dab of a bill, they are casual acrobats, hanging upside-down while hunting. Other songbirds will often join a bushtit flock, adding to the twitters and chirps.
Because many insect-eaters leave our area in summer to breed, only the bushtit is on bug duty year-round. It consumes large numbers of aphids, scale insects, and other garden pests, making it an important friend to gardeners.
Bushtits are also great at spotting hawks and will trill a warning call that scatters the flock. Other birds join them in diving for cover inside shrubs or the leafiest parts of trees. This behavior is often a bird-watcher’s first clue that a hawk is nearby.
A common resident of the LA area, bushtits live here year-round from sea level to the lower mountains, including in parks, gardens, and chaparral. Expected at many sites in the LA Basin, including Trips 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 14, 15, 19, and 21.
Aphelocoma californica
You may hear this bird before seeing it—its screechy, scolding call carries a long way, even in dense brush. The scrub-jay is jaunty and bold. Though it’s a jay and also blue, don’t call it a blue jay—the true blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) is an Easterner not normally found in California.
Scrub-jays are omnivores and eat a wide range of food—fruit, insects, worms, seeds, and perhaps an unattended piece of your lunch. They’re also predators of small lizards, snakes, and birds, and they will raid nests, steal eggs, and even eat nestlings.
You’ll often find jays around oak trees, gathering and storing acorns, which makes them major competitors with acorn woodpeckers. Woodpeckers have to keep a close watch on their granaries to make sure jays don’t steal an easy meal. And jays have to be doubly cautious when they’re storing acorns—other jays sometimes watch and steal the acorn after its owner flies off.
Anywhere there are oaks, from scrub-oak chaparral through live oak woodlands and valley oak savannahs. They also turn up in residential neighborhoods and urban parks. Trips 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 14, and 20 will usually have this species, among many other sites.
Melozone crissalis
While we think of large birds such as eagles and hawks as being fierce, many smaller birds are just as spirited. As California towhee females build nests, the males stand guard, prepared to drive off rivals. They will even attack their own reflections in windows, hubcaps, or car side mirrors. Their warning call is a sharp, metallic chink!—if you hear it, scan the tops of nearby bushes or fence posts to find a towhee standing watch.
At first glance, this is yet another brown bird—birders call them little brown jobs or LBJs. Often the California towhee is one of the first LBJs a novice bird-watcher learns. They’re common in many large parks, chaparral slopes, oak woodlands, and even backyards of houses in the foothills. Clearly larger than the sparrows it often flocks with, it has an orange-tinged butt, as if it sat in pumpkin-colored paint and couldn’t quite wash it off.
California towhees forage for seeds in dirt and leaf litter. They scratch the ground with a distinctive two-step hop: forward, then back, scratching away to expose food. They mostly eat seeds but will also eat grasshoppers and beetles. If you hear something moving under a bush, it may sound like something large but is more likely to be one of these little birds. They nest in shrubs too, including poison oak; they love eating that plant’s white berries.
Year-round, in brush from sea level to about five thousand feet. Common in suburban residential areas and large parks (Elysian Park, Baldwin Hills, Debs Park), but less so in smaller parks surrounded by lots of urban hardscape (MacArthur Park or Exposition Park). Trips 1, 4, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18 and 19.
Accipiter cooperii
Cooper’s hawks, also called chicken hawks, are ambush predators, flying swiftly between trees, over hedges, and around buildings to surprise and catch prey—small birds like finches and starlings and larger ones like doves and pigeons. They often hunt around backyard feeders, where we’ve unwittingly established a simple urban food chain: small birds eat birdseed, Cooper’s hawks eat small birds.
Unlike the more familiar red-tailed hawk, which often soars on broad, stable wings, the Cooper’s hawk is an accipiter—less a hang glider than an aerodynamic stealth plane. Accipiters aren’t great gliders; they’re built for speed and cornering, with slender bodies, long tails, and short wings.
Cooper’s hawks were considered scarce and declining as recently as the 1970s, but their numbers in urban and suburban areas have rebounded thanks to diminished use of some of our worst pesticides, planting of more tall trees for them to nest in, stronger populations of the sparrows and doves they eat, and the fact that we no longer routinely harass and shoot them.
Both adult male and female Cooper’s hawks are blue-gray above and reddish below, with a tail banded by wide, dark stripes. Juveniles are brown above, with light and reddish-brown stripes below.
A look-alike species is the smaller, more square-tailed sharp-shinned hawk—a fairly common visitor from October to March. It too is a bird-hunting accipiter, and if either of these hawks is nearby, all smaller birds dive for cover.
Widespread in areas with trees, from middle elevations in the mountains down through foothill canyons and suburban areas; also, common today in the urban core as long as there are enough trees. Present year-round, but there are more of them from September through March because of migrants passing through. Possible at all the sites, including 1, 3, 14, 16, and 20.
It’s easy to confuse the American crow with its rowdier, more robust cousin, the common raven. Both are all-black, impressively smart, and able to find and eat a huge variety of foods—from worms to acorns to birds’ eggs to lizards. In Los Angeles, people used to shoot both as farm pests, but as city has replaced farmland, we’ve grown more tolerant. Crows can be seen everywhere in urban Los Angeles. Ravens are usually spotted in large parks, mountains, and deserts.
The expanding city and all the trees we’ve planted in it have helped crow populations flourish. They like trees for nesting, nighttime roosting, and food (nuts, fruits). They also really like dumpsters, and trash in general. Our society provides everything they need, which is one reason you see them from the beach up into the foothills. Ravens aren’t as common in the lowlands, but as you climb into the mountains, they become more prominent, especially in picnic areas.
Crows and ravens are super smart. They can use tools and recognize not just the faces of people they like and don’t like but even the cars those individuals drive. They know how to crack nuts by letting cars drive over them and can use traffic signals to figure out which cars are coming next. Some scientists believe they’re as good at problem solving as chimpanzees. Our estimates of their intelligence rise higher with each study.
Crow or Raven?| Crows | Ravens | |
| SIZE | wingspan about 3 feet | wingspan about 4 feet |
| TAIL (in flight) |
square or slightly rounded | diamond shaped or very rounded |
| VOICE | caww, caww | kr-r-ruck and lots of other croaks and knocks |
| BILL | straighter and more slender than raven’s | thicker than a crow’s, hooked at tip |
| WINGS (in flight) |
usually five broad feather “fingers” at outer tips | often show four long, thin feather “fingers” at outer tips |
| FLIGHT | flaps from place to place | soars in circles like a hawk |
| HABITAT | more urban inhabiting (cities, fields, and the coast) | generally more in mountains and deserts, sometimes large urban parks |
Year-round, throughout the urban lowlands as well as open oak woodlands and wooded streams. They love dumps and parks. Work on your crow versus raven identification skills on Trips 9, 11, 15, and 20.
Sturnus vulgaris
The starling loves cities—in Los Angeles you can see them in large groups on park lawns or perched on utility lines. It also loves farmland and can be a serious pest. Native to Europe, starlings are perhaps the most abundant and most invasive of all our non-native bird species (the house sparrow also competes for this title).
All 200 million starlings nationwide are descendants of one hundred individuals released in New York City in the 1890s by people who wanted all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare to live in North America. It was a horrible idea. They spread from Central Park, eating crops and driving out native species. As recently as the 1960s, spotting one in Los Angeles was rare, but now they’re everywhere.
Starlings nest in holes, aggressively bullying native birds out of tree cavities. Bluebirds, purple martins, and multiple species of swallows have been especially hard hit by starlings stealing their nests. A good way to help bluebirds and other native species is to install nest boxes designed with entrances too small for starlings to fit through.
The starling is chunky, with a straight, short beak and a short tail. It waddles on the ground, looking intently left and right, ready to stab its beak at an insect or a choice seed. In fall, the tips of its feathers show bright white dots, giving it a speckled look. As fall turns to spring, those tips wear away, leaving behind all-dark feathers. When breeding season approaches, its bill brightens to a glowing yellow. Direct sunlight brings out its feathers’ iridescent green and purple sheen—the overall effect is of a pot-bellied but snappy dresser.
Throughout the LA region, in urban and suburban areas, ranches, and open fields; starlings generally avoid deep woodlands. Flocks perch on wires, power poles and in trees; they mostly feed on the ground but take fruits in trees and shrubs. Your best chance at a local murmuration is present year-round along the San Gabriel River near El Monte. Typical sites are 3, 7, 10, 12, 19, and 24.
Ardea herodias
The familiar and eye-catching great blue heron stands nearly four feet tall and has a six-foot wingspan. Its thin, graceful neck and long legs give it a ballerina look, but its stout, dagger-like bill means business—these herons hunt a variety of food, including fish, frogs, and crayfish in the LA River. They’ll also devour lizards, snakes, mice, birds, grasshoppers, and dragonflies. Sometimes you’ll even see them hunting on lawns or golf courses, sneaking up on unwary pocket gophers. It usually manages to swallow a sizeable catch, but occasionally its eyes are bigger than its stomach—herons have been known to try swallowing fish so big they choke to death. Unless it’s nesting season, they’re usually solitary.
Often seen along the LA River and around lakes, ponds, and river channels. Small nesting colonies, called heronries, occur in tall pines, eucalyptus, and other trees at places like Silver Lake, Marina del Rey, Malibu Lagoon, Legg Lake, and the Sepulveda Basin. Some nests are over four feet wide and get used several years in a row.
They’re also found in coastal estuaries, sometimes perched on rafts of matted kelp. Expected many places, especially Trips 3, 5, 10, 18, and 22.
Bubo virginianus
Eleven species of owls have been observed in LA County, but the great horned owl is our largest and most common. We most often detect it by its hooting call, delivered from atop a utility pole or tall tree in parks like Elysian and Griffith, from dusk to the earliest hint of dawn. If you hear one when there’s still a bit of light left, try spotting it—their large size and distinctive silhouette make them easy to identify.
Great horned owls are mottled gray-brown, with black barring through their plumage and a reddish-brown face setting off yellow eyes. Feather tufts on each side of the forehead, which may help owls recognize each other, give them a cat-like silhouette, but the tufts aren’t ears. Their real ears are hidden and placed in just the right spot on their heads so that their wide faces can act like a satellite dish to focus sound into them. For an owl, good hearing means good hunting.
Great horned owls nest in trees and cliff ledges, often taking over old hawk nests. They nest early in the year. Both males and females hoot, but the male’s hooting is deeper, even though he is smaller, and usually consists of four notes. The female’s higher-pitched call has five to seven notes. Adults and especially young birds also give eerie shrieking calls.
The great horned owl’s diet is diverse, including rodents, other small mammals, birds, reptiles, and large insects. Jerusalem crickets are common small prey, but they can also eat skunks, geese, and hawks. Although they occasionally prey on cats and small dogs, it’s very rare.
Like other birds of prey, owls can’t pass bone fragments through their digestive tract so they cough them up in a compact gray wad called a pellet, only digesting the tastiest bits of dinner. You can find pellets on the ground under roost trees and learn a lot about the owl’s diet by picking them apart. A pellet is mostly fur, like a tightly packed lint ball peppered with harder fragments. You might find a mouse’s jaw with the teeth still intact or perhaps pieces that look like bits of plastic but are actually leftover insect parts.
Great horned owls have experienced some local declines from West Nile Virus but are still relatively common. They use a wide variety of habitats but especially like tall trees with adjacent open fields, chaparral, or open woodlands. Possibilities include Trips 1, 2, 8, 9, 16, and 17.
Icterus cucullatus
A flashy yellow-and-black harbinger of spring, the hooded oriole went from an oasis specialist in Palm Springs to a content LA urbanite. There are probably more hooded orioles in Los Angeles now than there ever were pre-irrigation and palm trees.
The male is a glamorous yellow, with a contrasting black throat and face, plus matching black back, wings, and tail. Two white bars on each wing add even more flash. Young birds and females are olive-green above and pale yellow below, with dusky wings and tail.
Although they eat insects and berries, much of an oriole’s diet is nectar. They’re fond of ornamental trees such as coral trees and also visit hummingbird feeders. They weave their pouch-like nests from palm fibers and suspend the nest from the underside of palm fronds. However, because they were here before we planted exotic palms, they can also nest in any tree or shrub with large leaves and a dense canopy, such as stream-side sycamores—the key requirement is plant fibers for weaving.
Hooded orioles are here in summer only, and migrate to subtropical climates during our brief, cool winters. Adult males arrive first in spring (as early as the first week of March) and are the first to leave in fall (late August, early September). Females leave next, and hatch-year birds (juveniles) go last. On their first trip south, juveniles are on their own, with a built-in knowledge of the migratory path.
In summer, hooded orioles are found in city parks and residential areas (from sea level to about 2,500 feet), usually not far from palm trees. Migrating birds (heading north in March–April and south in July–September) can occur more widely through the region. Trips 4, 8, 11, 12, and 21 provide chances to see this showy migrant.
Haemorhous mexicanus
Named for their familiar presence around our homes and their habit of nesting on window ledges, eaves, patio light fixtures, and planters, house finches are probably the most abundant native bird species in the LA region. Few birds sound more cheerful. For a small fry, it can really belt it out.
Los Angeles is home to many invasive species, but it’s the origin for this one, now introduced across the country. These western US birds were once imported to New York and sold in pet stores as “Hollywood finches.” Escaped birds have since multiplied and are now spreading back towards California.
Like other birds that spend most of their time on the ground, all finches have a short, cone-shaped beak, good for crushing seeds. (Insect-eaters like warblers are the same body size but have thinner, more needle-like bills—think dagger, not hammer.) House finches are mostly streaked gray-brown, but the males show red on the throat and chest, forehead, eyebrow, and rump. Females have no red plumage, and young males are in between.
The red color of the males is actually highly variable and can range from pale mustard-yellow through orange to deep scarlet. Birds can’t produce yellow and red pigments on their own; the pigments come from carotenoids, which are derived from plants. Variations in finch color reflect variations in their food: the more pigment in the food, the redder the male, and the redder the male, the more likely females will be attracted to him.
House finches are found year-round throughout the lowlands and foothills (to about 6,000 feet), in both natural and urban habitats. Possible on all trips, including 6, 7, 11, and 24—most easily seen on Trip 7 at the seed feeders in the Museum’s Nature Gardens.
Passer domesticus
This is the stout little bird that steals your French fries at outdoor eateries. House sparrows should eat grains and seeds and catch insects to feed to their young, but in cities they mostly eat discarded human food.
Males look a bit like aging bank robbers, with a gray crown and black face mask. Both males and females are mostly streaky brown. They’re often found hopping in the dirt or perched on the top of a chain link fence.
House sparrows were introduced from Europe into eastern North America in 1851. They were released in part for their perceived ecological services—as insect control when horses were the dominant mode of transportation—as well as for sentimental reasons, since nineteenth century European immigrants wanted to be surrounded by familiar species. They spread to the LA region by about 1900 and are now found here year-round. Today, house sparrows may be doing better in the United States than in Europe, where populations have recently declined.
Look for them almost any place you find people—from the dense urban core to suburbs, shopping malls, parks, rural ranch yards, and coastal piers and wharves. There are even individuals that live much of their lives inside buildings like Home Depot, Costco, and terminals at LAX. You’re not likely to find them in chaparral, oak woodlands, or mountain forests. Reliable spots are Trips 3, 7, 10, 12, and 24 and outside any fast food restaurant.
Zipping and darting, looping and probing, the hummingbirds are familiar friends in urban gardens. Start by learning the two most common. The Allen’s hummingbird is the red-and-green one. Males are more cinnamon-red than the females, flashing a vermilion throat patch as they defend a choice blossom or feeder, ready to take on any challengers. Anna’s has a plain belly, and in the males, a magenta throat patch.
Originally Allen’s hummingbird was limited to the Channel Islands and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, but as houses, yards, and lush landscaping change the plant palette of Southern California, they continue to spread inland, inhabiting new regions every year, overlapping with and sometimes displacing other hummingbird species.
A hummingbird is a marvel of movement. By beating their wings around fifty times per second, they can fly sideways, straight up, straight down, backwards, and even upside down. They can also hover in place by beating their wings in a figure-eight pattern. At the peak of activity, a hummingbird’s heart beats over a thousand times a minute.
Mothers build nests out of lichen and soft plant fuzz, adding spiderwebs so the nest can stretch with her growing babies. Each egg is smaller than a jellybean. Through it all, the female is on her own—males don’t help incubate eggs or raise young.
Everybody knows hummingbirds love sugar water. Few realize that a fair amount of their diet is insects as well. Hummingbirds coming regularly to a feeder still need to forage in the wild—bug protein keeps them healthy.
Thanks to their dazzling feathers, male hummingbirds are even more beautiful than the flowers they feed on. The iridescent colors depend on the angle of the light, so brilliant red and green feathers can turn dull or black a microsecond later as the bird moves, then flash out again like an iridescent lighthouse.
Like most hummingbirds in our area, Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds feed on cape honeysuckle, various kinds of eucalyptus, bottlebrush, and many other flowers. Reliable sites for Allen’s—the one many visiting birdwatchers want to see—include Trips 12, 21, and 25. To see Anna’s, try Trips 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, and most others. See both species at the hummingbird feeders in the Nature Gardens (Trip 7).
Anas platyrhynchus
This is the most familiar of our urban ducks—it’s a rare park lake that doesn’t have mallards on it. They are so tolerant of people in urban areas that they even check out backyard ponds and pools—sometimes nesting in inappropriate places, like under hedges or in the ornamental pools at the Getty Center. A world map of mallards reveals that, except for the Arctic, Antarctic, and super high elevations, they’ll live pretty much anywhere—from Disneyland to the Notre Dame Cathedral.
Their success comes in part from their ability to make lots of babies. A single hen (female ducks are called hens; males are called drakes) can lay up to thirteen eggs. The downy young are mobile right after hatching. They look like fuzzy yellow Easter chicks with brown stripes, swimming in a line after mom and sometimes catching a ride on her back. Their diet is also very diverse—snails, worms, seeds, and plant roots.
Mallards have long been domesticated and are the source for many domestic breeds. These are the ducks you see hanging, plucked, in Chinatown markets—they’re highly prized for eating. The appearance of different breeds is astoundingly variable; feral domestic birds have interbred with wild birds, resulting in many color variations (all-black, light tan, all-white, etc.) and many sizes.
Feathers get battered over time and need to be replaced. Birds replace their feathers in a process called molting. Mallards undergo a major molt in the late summer—males lose their conspicuous green head and neck, deep reddish breast, and light gray body, and take on a duller, more female-like plumage. Any male duck in this phase (no matter the species) is said to be in eclipse plumage. Male mallards in their eclipse plumage still have a yellow bill and an iridescent blue patch on the wing bordered by white (this patch is called the speculum).
Shortly after replacing their body feathers, mallards also replace the primary feathers of their wings, rendering the ducks flightless for a few weeks. In the fall, males regain their showy, green-headed glory in preparation for their winter courtship and spring breeding season.
Mallards can be found on any park lake, along the length of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers, and in other small wetlands throughout the area. They’re present year-round and the most common breeding duck species here. Trips 3, 5, 8, 10, 21, and 23 often have mallards.
Zenaida macroura
These are real survivors. Despite being food for everything from coyotes to Cooper’s hawks, this long-tailed, small-headed, gray-tan dove is found pretty much everywhere. There may be over 350 million of them in North America.
Mourning doves live in a variety of habitats, from the urban core to grasslands, mountain forests, and canyon woodlands. However, they avoid areas with continuous shrub cover, such as chaparral, because they need open ground for foraging.
Museum ornithologist Kimball Garrett says a mourning dove’s nest “is a pathetic affair”—just a platform of twigs and sticks so spare you can see through it. They often build in planters and hanging pots in backyards, but also in shrubs, low in trees, and sometimes even directly on the ground. Like all of our pigeons and doves, they lay two white eggs.
For the first week after the babies hatch, parents feed them a kind of liquid produced in a part of their throat called the crop. Like human milk, “crop milk” is rich in protein. Later, parents switch over to sharing seeds, regurgitating partially digested food until the young grow feathers and can forage on their own.
When we think about the LA soundscape, in addition to helicopters and the next-door neighbor’s music, mourning doves definitely play a part. From Silver Lake to Long Beach, Azusa to Tarzana, once you learn to recognize it, you can easily hear their five-part cooWOO coo, coo coo (you may also hear a more inconsistent coo CWoo cu, which comes from the Eurasian collared-dove, a relative newcomer not found in Los Angeles until 2001). A group of mourning doves taking flight from the ground creates a sort of whinny or squeaky door sound, caused by the shape of their wing feathers.
Throughout the LA area, from sea level to the mountains, and from coastal woodlands to desert scrub to the city’s urban core. They feed on the ground and readily come to seed feeders (or the seeds on the ground below). Check the feeders in the Museum’s Nature Gardens on Trip 7. Other easy places to study them include Trips 3, 11, 21, and 24.
Mimus polyglottos
This sing-all-night bird is common in parks, neighborhoods, and the dense urban core. More than just a pretty voice, the northern mockingbird is also fierce. It’s known to scold, chase, and dive-bomb crows, hawks, jays, cats, and even people.
While in general this is a slender, light gray bird without much obvious color or decoration, its wings do show a large patch of white when it’s in flight, and the blackish tail is broadly edged with white as well. The tail flash is quite conspicuous when a mockingbird takes flight or lands. Of course, long before you notice the tail, you’ll usually be alerted to its presence by its loud and varied calls.
Depending on time of year and location, both females and males sing. In building their songbook, northern mockingbirds copy simple calls from other birds and, in the city, other sounds like car alarms. The mimicked phrases are usually repeated three times (sometimes more, sometimes less) before the singer moves on to the next phrase. A song can go on for many minutes or even hours, a source of consternation for some LA residents who value sleep—territorial males will sing through much of the night in spring and summer.
Found year-round throughout the lowland and urban parts of the LA region (rarely above 4,000 feet in elevation). Found on almost all trips including 6, 7, 12, 13, 21, and 24.
Columba livia
Found in cities all over the world, the familiar park and street pigeon is called rock pigeon or rock dove in bird books, while less charitable people call them sky rats. They’re at home from the breakwaters of LA harbors through the densest urban areas to towns and ranches on the rural fringes of Los Angeles. Some find them a nuisance, but this bird has amazing stories to tell.
The most basic rock pigeons are gray with a white rump, with black bars on the upper wing, white underwings, a black tail tip, and green iridescence on the head and chest. But there are many variations on this theme, in large part because hobbyists who breed pigeons love different colors and patterns.
In flight, they raise their wings on the upstroke into an exaggerated V much deeper than most birds do. On take-off, their wings even clap together on the upstroke, which might serve to alert other birds in the flock of potential danger, as well as disorient nearby predators.
Pigeons are capable of finding their way home over extremely long distances, sometimes greater than one thousand miles. Scientists are still researching how they do it, but they seem to use many senses, including vision, smell, low-frequency hearing, and assessing the Earth’s magnetic field.
During World War II, homing pigeons were placed on every bomber and reconnaissance aircraft used by the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force. If a plane crashed, the pigeons were released to carry the coordinates of the crashed plane back to their home base so search and rescue missions could be sent directly to the crash sites. These “war birds” are credited with saving thousands of servicemen’s lives.
Rock pigeons shun vegetation and prefer perching on hardscape—within their native range in North Africa and Europe they lived on cliffs. Cities, filled with bridges, railings, utility poles, wires, and statues, are ideal for them. They nest on building ledges and bridges—though if cliffs are available, like those on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, they’ll nest there too.
Abundant and familiar, pigeons are found throughout urbanized areas. You’re not likely to find them in natural woodland or chaparral habitats, but where there’s a clear human footprint on the landscape, these pigeons are likely present.
Larus occidentalis
This large, dark-backed, pink-legged seagull has learned to follow humans inland away from its seaside habitat. Traditionally, western gulls bred only on the Channel Islands (and in very small numbers in our coastal harbors), but in the past thirty years they’ve become familiar throughout the LA Basin, and even into the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys.
It’s all about food. Western gulls feed on marine life, whether live or dead. But to a good scavenger, a leftover chunk of peanut butter sandwich is as good as a dead crab. Like other local animals, western gulls have learned the formula: people = trash = food. As a result, they congregate at landfills and schoolyards. Many western gulls also live along the LA River, often roosting on warehouse roofs.
Smaller and paler than an adult western gull, the California gull has yellow-green legs (not pink) and is more common inland.
There are nineteen species of gulls in LA County. Multiple species can sometimes be observed in a single flock. Hybrids create confusion and young gulls complicate things further. The western gull molts multiple times, resulting in new plumage and a new look from year to year. It also has two forms, one lighter and one a shade darker.
Abundant along the Pacific coast and out to sea, the western gull can appear anywhere in the LA Basin, especially around large parking lots, open parks, schoolyards, and park lakes. You can almost always find them on Trips 5, 22, 23, 24, and 25.
Brotogeris chiriri
Parakeets are a type of parrot. We may not expect these exotic birds in the city, but they’re here—and the yellow-chevroned parakeet seems to be thriving, from the tree outside your bedroom window to the high rise “parrot motel” palm trees lining our streets.
The yellow-chevroned parakeet is attractive and swift-flying, grass-green with a patch of yellow on each wing. A related species, the white-winged parakeet, sometimes gets mixed in with the same flock; as the name implies, it shows a flash of white in addition to the yellow patch. Both are just a bit larger and heavier than the common domestic budgie and quite a bit smaller than other wild parrots living locally, which have a harsher call, a shorter, squared-off tail, and other feather colors and patterns.
Parakeet flocks keep up a frequent, scratchy chattering, and in flight their loud call is an easy-to-learn chreet chreet. Listen for it and you’ll soon realize how many are crisscrossing the LA skyways.
Over thirty species of parrot have been seen flying around the LA Basin. All are descendants of escaped pets. Twelve of these feral parrot species are now breeding here. They’re supported by our abundant and diverse ornamental trees and shrubs, which provide seeds and nectar—notably the floss silk tree, which, like the parakeet, is from the Amazon region of South America. They also feed and roost in eucalyptus, coral trees, fruiting palms, ficus trees, and the dozens of other species that make up our urban jungle.
Widespread throughout the LA Basin and in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys. This is the parrot most often seen at the LA Civic Center, and noisy flocks flap around Echo Park, MacArthur Park, Huntington Gardens, Sepulveda Basin, Legg Lake, and many other areas, including Trips 7, 12, 19, and 21.
Myrmeleon species
Antlions aren’t the easiest insects to identify or spot, but once you know where and what to look for, you could be recognizing them in no time. Walking along trails, riverbanks, or other open sandy areas, you may find evidence of their larvae. In summer, adults are attracted to lights at night.
Adult antlions are sometimes confused for damselflies, the dragonfly’s slender, petite cousin. However, they’re easy to tell apart. Damselflies have finely veined, gossamer wings—antlion wings have thick veins, which form hundreds of tiny cells that look like miniature windows. Damselflies have short, needle-like antennae—antlions have long curved antennae with small knobs on the ends, like little hockey sticks. Finally, damselflies are fast-moving predators, while winged antlions feed on pollen and nectar from flowers.
Immature antlions are small, soft-bodied insects with gigantic, tong-like mouthparts. They dig conical pits in sandy soil and hide at the bottom with their mouthparts barely concealed by a fine layer of sand. Unsuspecting insects—often ants—trek through the sand and stumble into these deathtraps. If the ant falls to the bottom of the pit, the antlion swiftly makes a meal of it, using its mega-mandibles as spears then sucking the body fluids out. If the ant falls only part-way in and tries to escape, sand cascades down the sides of the pit, alerting the antlion, who then flicks sand grains towards the ant in an attempt to make it fall to the bottom. Sometimes the ant escapes—sometimes it becomes lunch.
Their conical traps are most easily seen along sandy trails on Trips 1, 13, 15, and 17. Adults can also be found coming to porch lights at night.
Linepithema humile
This is the ant that invades picnics, dishes of pet food, and sometimes kitchens across the LA Basin. In summer and fall, these ants make their way indoors seeking water, food, and more comfortable temperatures.
Argentine ants are our most common urban ant by far. Introduced to North America in the late 1800s from northern Argentina, they’re well adapted to our climate. Helped by human alterations to the environment, they’ve displaced native ants like harvester ants, the preferred food of local horned lizards, who won’t go near an Argentine ant buffet. As harvester ants are driven away, so too are horned lizards.
Unlike other ant species, Argentine ant colonies in California show little aggression toward each other. This gives them an edge—instead of fighting amongst themselves, they spend their time gathering food or fighting with native ants. Scientists have dubbed the colony in California a supercolony—with all the ants from San Diego to Northern California part of the same giant group. This has allowed them to outcompete and displace other ant species.
Find these ants anywhere, anytime! There are almost certainly Argentine ants within a one hundred-foot radius of you right now. They can also easily be observed on Trips 7, 12, and 19, and along any grass-lined sidewalk.
Hippodamia convergens
Crawling amongst the spinach in community gardens, chewing on the pesky aphids threatening your roses, or overwintering in our local mountains, this charismatic insect is often a gateway bug for the insect phobic.
The convergent ladybug fits the ladybug archetype—an iconic reddish orange beetle with black spots on their elytra. The number of spots varies, but it’s usually thirteen.
The best way to identify it is to look at the pronotum, the shield-like covering above the head. It’s black with a white border and two white lines that are about to converge—hence the descriptive scientific name.
Few insects inspire warm, fuzzy feelings in humans the way ladybugs, sometimes known as lady beetles or ladybird beetles, do. But to an aphid or other small soft-bodied insect, ladybugs are terrifying killers. Both adult and young ladybugs are voracious predators. Immature ladybugs are soft bodied and elongate—some people think they look like miniature alligators, and they certainly act the part. Ladybug larvae can eat thirty to fifty aphids a day—you’re welcome, gardeners!
When days get shorter and colder, and aphids are in short supply, convergent ladybugs head for the hills to overwinter and wait for food to return.
Adult ladybugs are sold in nurseries to help gardeners control pests. However, they have a habit of flying away without eating much. Scientists have found it takes two applications of 1,500 ladybugs spaced a week apart to control the aphids on one infested rosebush!
Encouraging ladybugs to show up in your yard by choice is better than buying them, but they won’t show up if there’s no food. Try creating a companion planting, a group of plants where you won’t mind some pest insects moving in to tempt beneficial bugs to your garden. Plants to try include yarrow, cilantro, cosmos, and marigolds. Always skip pesticides—they kill good bugs as well as pests.
Immature ladybugs are shaped differently than adults but they still have warning coloration to warn would-be predators of their toxic chemicals and bad taste.
In spring through fall, find them in almost any vegetable garden—try the Erika J. Glazer Family Edible Garden on Trip 7. For a real spectacle, head to higher elevations in winter and early spring to find them overwintering along the trails of Trips 16 and 17.
Dasymutilla sackenii
This velvety-looking insect is hard to spot, but if you’re lucky enough to find one, it’s hard to ignore. It’s not actually an ant at all, but a type of wasp (ants and wasps are closely related in the insect group Hymenoptera). There are a number of species of velvet ant in our region—ranging in color from bright red, to orange, to the golden velvet ant’s white or pale yellow. They look like white pom-poms made of dandelion fluff.
Female velvet ants are wingless and very fuzzy, resembling large ants. Males are smaller, have a black stripe on their abdomen, and have wings, which make them look more waspish. When confined, some female velvet ants will make a squeaking sound. If you’ve caught one in your hand and you hear this, it’s a good idea to drop it immediately. Female velvet ants can pack a strong punch with their stingers—some species are referred to as cow killers. Look but don’t touch!
Scientists have observed adult velvet ants sipping nectar from flowers, but immature wasps choose more protein-filled foods. Female velvet ants lay their eggs in the burrows of other ground-nesting wasps. They’re the perfect spot—hidden from other predators and filled with food. The female enters the nest and lays her eggs on the developing larva or pupa. When the velvet ant hatches, it has fresh meat to eat!
Velvet ants can be found in dry, sandy areas. Foothills surrounding the LA Basin and the surrounding deserts are good places to spot them. Females can be seen scurrying around on the ground; males are winged and rarely seen. Look for them on Trips 1 and 13.
Schistocerca nitens
The gray bird grasshopper is the largest grasshopper in our area, sometimes growing to almost three inches long. As the name implies, it’s mostly gray, with mottled brown/black and white markings. This allows them to hide in plain sight, camouflaged against gray-brown soils (as nymphs, gray bird grasshoppers are bright green for hiding in vegetation).
Although this species has been known to fly up to three hundred miles over oceans (no wonder they are found on the Channel Islands), grasshoppers are generally better known for their jumping ability. With their modified hind legs—entomologists call them saltatorial legs—most can jump about twenty times their body length. This would be the equivalent of a six-foot-tall human hopping a whole football field in three jumps! One reason grasshoppers can jump so far is their specialized knee joints, which act like catapults and propel them forward.
All over Los Angeles, particularly in summer. You’ll sometimes spot a female laying eggs in the gravelly dirt paths in the Museum’s Nature Gardens—she digs her abdomen in and sits there until all her eggs are deposited. Look for adults, nymphs, and egg-laying females on Trips 7 and 12.
Anax junius
As they dart along the banks of the San Gabriel River or sit on reeds at Echo Park Lake, these large dragonflies are hard to miss. Although they can be seen year round, they are most common spring through fall, when their migration brings large numbers to our area.
This insect belongs to a group of large dragonflies called darners, named for their resemblance to a darning needle. One of the largest dragonflies in our area, they have a three-inch-long body and a wingspan of up to four inches—similar in length and wingspan to some hummingbirds.
They also have a bright green thorax and huge eyes. These eyes take up most of the head and give the dragonfly nearly 360-degree vision. Males have bright blue abdomens, whereas females are a purplish gray. Unlike some dragonflies, green darners have clear wings.
When mating, a male dragonfly uses the claspers at the end of his abdomen to hold the female behind her head. She then arches her abdomen up to his, producing the wheel position you sometimes see dragonflies flying around in.
Dragonflies are amazing predators, both as winged adults and aquatic larvae. The fast-moving larvae are able to escape their own would-be predators by jet propelling water from their hind end. They can also move slowly, particularly when stalking prey like small fish, tadpoles, or other dragonflies. As adults they hunt on the wing, using their spiny legs to capture and hold soft-bodied flying insects like mosquitoes. Then their large, crushing mandibles help them kill and break down their prey.
Most easily spotted on Trips 1, 5, 7, 10, and 21 on warm sunny days between April and November. Look for molted exuvia around the water’s edge at sites 7 and 21.
Cotinis mutabilis
The clumsy, haphazard flight of green fruit beetles often finds them colliding with people, buildings, or cars. You can find them just about anywhere, but gardens and orchards are the easiest places to spot one. Look for their grubs (grubs are to beetles, as caterpillars are to butterflies) in a backyard compost bin, and the adults around ripe fruit.
There’s no need to fear these chunky flying tanks, with their velvety green wings, golden sides, and shiny green underbellies. They cannot sting or bite us, and they are neither poisonous nor venomous. The worst they can do is chew on the fruit in our garden. Many people confuse them with the Japanese Beetle, Popillia japonica, a common East Coast agricultural pest. In comparison, green fruit beetles are larger, much less damaging to crops, and have green rather than copper-colored elytra.
Green fruit beetles moved into the LA Basin in the 1960s from New Mexico and Arizona. They eat fruit—cactus pears in the wild and backyard fruits in cities. Adults have a horn-like projection beneath their head to help them cut into their fruit of choice—peaches, nectarines, and figs are particular favorites.
In grub form, green fruit beetles are sometimes called crawly backs because they travel through the soil upside down. They have a series of short bristles on the back of the thorax that help them grip the ground to move forward. If you find one in your compost bin, pick it up and gently rub the area behind its head to feel the bristles. This won’t hurt them, and they won’t hurt you either.
Look for these beetles close to where fruit trees grow in the summer months. Most likely to be seen on Trips 10, 11, and 12.
Family Stenopelmatidae
Although primarily nocturnal, Jerusalem crickets are sometimes seen in the daytime after getting stranded during a nighttime foray. They can also be found taking cover under old boards or downed logs.
Unlike the cricket under your refrigerator who chirps at 2 a.m., Jerusalem crickets can’t sing. True crickets rub their wings together to produce their songs, but Jerusalem crickets are wingless. They have a high domed head reminiscent of a human skull, a shiny brown exoskeleton, and large biting mouthparts. Their six robust, spiked legs are modified for digging in soil, which is where you’ll find them most of the year. Their biting mandibles are ideal for cutting through underground roots and tubers, which sometimes includes gardeners’ potatoes—hence the common name potato bug.
The unmistakable visage and large size of Jerusalem crickets has inspired fear in various cultures. The Navajo named them skull insect and believed they were deadly venomous. In reality, they aren’t venomous and can’t kill you. They can bite, but usually don’t—we don’t smell or taste like their food.
In Spanish, they’re called niños de la tierra or children of the Earth, and folklore says they can cry like a baby. Scientists haven’t recorded this behavior, but they have observed drumming communication. Using their abdomens as a drum stick, they beat the ground and send vibrations to each other through the soil.
Look for Jerusalem crickets while doing garden work, after heavy rains, and along trails in natural areas. Most likely to be seen on Trips 14, 16, and 17.
Leptotes marina
Find marine blues hovering over flowers right outside City Hall, in backyards all over town, or in a local park—notably, it’s the most common blue butterfly in Griffith Park. Although it’s active February through November, it’s most commonly seen darting from flower to flower on warm, sunny days.
Luckily, marine blue caterpillars aren’t picky eaters. Two other locals, the El Segundo blue butterfly and the Palos Verdes blue butterfly, have caterpillars that eat only one species of plant. As Los Angeles grows, habitat for these host plants disappears, and with few host plants, both species have ended up on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species list.
Marine blues, however, eat many native plants found throughout Los Angeles, including common deerweed, milkvetch, and sweet peas. Increasingly, they’ve also been enjoying plumbago, an ornamental from South Africa. Lucky for them, this flowering shrub with sticky, purple blooms is all over the city, purposefully planted next to front porches, in alleyways, along the LA River, and on many freeway embankments.
Marine blue caterpillars come in a variety of colors, depending on the plants they eat. They range from green to brown, to this spectacular pink.
Marine blue caterpillars are among many species of blue butterfly with a special relationship to ants. Here’s how it works: an ant strokes the caterpillar with its antennae (called antennation), and, from two special tubes near its head, the caterpillar produces drops of a sugar and protein-laced liquid it produces specifically for the ants. In return, the ants protect the caterpillars from predators and parasitic insects.
These butterflies can be easily spotted on warm sunny days March through October. Check out Trips 7, 9, and 21 for your best chance to see them.
Danaus plexippus
You can find monarchs fluttering at a fifth story window box downtown, visiting flowers at your local plant nursery, or just winging it along your neighborhood street. During winter months they form colonies of thousands in trees along the coast. You might see them on eucalyptus in the Pacific Palisades or Malibu, but for really impressive roostings, head up to Pismo Beach State Park.
The monarchs’ orange and black alternating stripes are warning colors to potential predators that they won’t taste good. As caterpillars, they pick up toxins from the milkweed plants they eat. The toxins don’t harm the caterpillars but protect them and the adults they become from being eaten. Young birds that haven’t learned the lesson yet spit out monarchs after the first few chomps.
Monarchs are perhaps most famous for their long migration south to Mexico. But our monarchs don’t make that trip. They don’t need to. Los Angeles winters are mild and food is available year round. Instead they choose one of two options. Either they head to the beach to meet up with hundreds, if not thousands, of their kin and roost in trees through the winter months. Or they stick around in backyards where milkweed is still growing. Historically, the native milkweeds in our area would go dormant in the winter months—dropping their leaves until spring. When Angelenos started planting tropical milkweed, monarchs were able to stay inland through the winter and continue laying eggs on fresh leaves. Some people worry that non-native milkweed disrupts monarch seasonality, and could harbor protozoan parasites that infect monarchs, so they prune back the plant over winter months.
Some West Coast monarchs do migrate. In the spring after the butterflies have overwintered up and down the California coast, some fly up to the Sierra Nevada or Central Valley and lay eggs. Their offspring head further north and east into Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, or Nevada. At the end of the summer, the great-grandchildren of the overwintering monarchs return south to hang out along our California coastline. A few even head south through Arizona and into Mexico to join the East Coast butterflies.
Loss of milkweed in its spring through fall range, use of pesticides, and loss of overwintering habitat in Mexico threatens the eastern population of monarchs. Our western population is constantly changing, but despite yearly fluctuations in their numbers, scientists believe the overall population is on the decline too. Groups like the Xerces Society are working to ensure that West Coast monarchs are protected, and in urban California, their numbers may be higher thanks to increased wildlife-friendly landscaping.
Community science projects like Monarch Alert (monarchalert.calpoly.edu) help track monarch movements by tagging adults. Anyone can be trained to catch the butterflies and attach the small circular stickers to their hind wings. When butterflies with a tag are recovered, people call in their findings to the project and help scientists understand where West Coast monarchs spend the winter.
Monarch butterflies are most easily found in the spring, summer, and fall. Look for their caterpillars on milkweed plants, and for adults flying around on Trips 7 and 12. In winter, go north to one of the Central California overwintering sites.
Family Mantidae
These charismatic insects appear all over Los Angeles in summer and fall—clinging to screen doors, cruising along sidewalks, or hunting insects in your garden. In winter when it’s too cold to find the adults, you can still find their egg cases, called oothecas, attached to twigs, downed logs, and the sides of buildings. The loaf-shaped papery masses are a great sign for gardeners opting for organic pest control.
From the tiniest, newly-hatched mantids, to the large green- or brown-colored adults, these insects are unmistakable. Their modified front legs are perfect for capturing and manipulating prey. They hold these legs together in front of them, a posture that looks like praying and gives them their common name.
Ever noticed how they tilt their head when looking at you? Their triangular heads have two large compound eyes made up of hundreds of individual lenses, ideal for detecting prey and tracking movement. Adults have leathery front wings that protect their flying wings. Some local mantids can use these wings to clumsily fly. Some also have warning coloration and eye-spots on the hind wings. When threatened, they rear up on their hind legs, raise their front legs, and show off the shocking patterns on their wings—keep away, I’m dangerous!
Mantids are legendary predators. They sit and wait for their prey of choice—crickets, grasshoppers, or flies—and pick off the food as it walks or flies by.
Mantids are no strangers to cannibalism. When young mantids hatch out of their egg cases, they must find food small enough to chew. Tiny flies and immature insects are good, but siblings also work. If you ever take an egg case inside for observation, be sure to let the immature mantids out immediately after hatching or you’ll end up with a few very large babies.
Cannibalism often features in tales of mantis mating. Although females have been observed decapitating their male companions after mating, it’s not the rule. One study found that males escaped 83 percent of the time.
Start looking for immature mantids in the spring and large adults later into the summer. They are most likely to be found on Trips 7, 11, 12, and 15.
Family Tenebrionidae
Stink beetles, or darkling beetles, can be seen crawling across almost any hiking trail in our natural areas. Because they can’t fly—their shield-like front wings are fused together—they have to walk everywhere. Usually they’re out searching for food. Well adapted to dry climates, they don’t need to search for water because they can get all the water they need from the plants they eat.
If a stink beetle is disturbed, it has a few ways to escape trouble. Some species freeze and play dead—laying on their backs with all six legs stuck in the air. Some choose a more aggressive strategy: turning their backs to the danger, they raise their rear ends and eject a dark brown, unpleasant-smelling substance from the tip of their abdomens. Even a hungry coyote won’t make a meal of something so foul.
Some animals have figured out how to deal with the bad smell. Skunks grab the beetles and roll them on the ground until they expel all of the unpleasant chemicals. Grasshopper mice take the beetles and bury their hind ends in the sand. The mouse then delivers a deathblow to the head and eats its prey in peace.
Expect to cross paths with these charismatic travelers on any of your foothill hikes, such as Trips 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 16, and 25. If you see one in loose dirt, check out its tracks and see where it has been.
Eristalinus taeniops
Flitting from flower to flower in Eagle Rock backyards or in the Museum’s Nature Gardens, this fly is a beautiful garden inhabitant. Look closely—what you thought was a bee, with distinctive alternating bands of yellow and brown, is actually a pollinating fly!
The family Syrphidae, also known as drone flies or hoverflies, are relatively easy to identify. If you see an insect with huge eyes hovering over flowers in your garden, chances are you have just spotted a flower fly. The stripe-eyed flower fly is the flashiest of our local hoverflies, with patterned eyes and a large body about the size of a honey bee. At a distance, many mistake these flies for bees, but when you’re close enough, the mimicry is obvious. Honey bees have hairy bodies and dark brown eyes—the stripe-eyed flower fly has a smooth body and bigger, patterned eyes. Bees also have four wings as opposed to a fly’s two, but that’s almost impossible to tell when it’s flying or at a distance.
The stripe-eyed flower fly was first recorded in California in 2006 at the Fullerton Arboretum in Orange County. It’s originally from Southern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and scientists aren’t exactly sure how it got here. As with other introduced species, scientists monitor the effects they have on native flora and fauna—to date, no ill effects have been recorded in California.
Look for stripe-eyed flower flies hovering near flowering plants, where they collect nectar and pollinate flowers in the process. Larvae are aquatic, so look for them in standing water. The adults can be found on blooming flowers in pocket parks along the LA River (Trip 10), and blooming buckwheats on Trip 7 are an especially likely spot to observe this newcomer.
Family Theraphosidae
Tarantulas are a thrilling yet rare sight in Southern California. You’ll see them most commonly in fall, when male spiders are out looking for mates. They clamber along hiking trails, cross roads, and sometimes walk into homes adjacent to natural areas.
These large, hairy spiders sometimes appear to have ten legs. However, the first pair of appendages aren’t legs at all; they’re sensory organs called pedipalps. Mature males have particularly long pedipalps with enlarged tips that look a bit like they’re wearing extra-warm mittens. In the fall, males use them to store and transfer sperm while mating.
Tarantulas also have large fangs to deliver venom, which subdues their prey—crickets, grasshoppers, and other small insects. Our local species aren’t a threat to humans. Their venom is mild, and it’s very hard to provoke them to bite.
Tarantulas are delicate creatures and vulnerable to predators. Once they build their underground burrows, they mostly stay inside. Immature males and female tarantulas are very rarely seen outside, but like all creatures, they must eat. To stay as risk-free as possible, they spin a silken “doormat” around their burrow entrance. When an unsuspecting insect—or other small creature—stumbles onto the silk, vibrations alert the tarantula. Quick as a flash they come out to subdue their prey, then take the food back into the burrow and eat in safety.
When it reaches about 6–7 years old, a male tarantula makes its final molt and is ready to reproduce. His only objective is to find a mate, so he wanders around in search of a female’s burrow. When he finds one, he’ll tap gently on the silken doormat to let her know he’s there. If she’s receptive, she’ll come out and receive his sperm packet, which he deposits on the silk for her. As with some other spider species, females have been reported to attack males after mating, making a meal of them.
Though their venom is too weak to threaten large predators, tarantulas do have a defense strategy. When a coyote or rodent gets too close, they use their back legs to kick off abdominal hairs—arachnologists (spider scientists) call them urticating hairs—and throw them like darts. The hairs are barbed and irritating, particularly when they land in the eyes, nose, or mouth. Some caterpillars and many plant species, such as stinging nettle, also have urticating hairs for defense.
Tarantulas aren’t easy to find, but the best time to see them is in the fall from September to October, when males are out looking for a mate. They may be seen crawling over roads, trails, and across sandy washes. Look for them on Trips 1, 2, 4, 15, and 16.
Pepsis species
These wasps, also known as pepsis wasps, aren’t often seen in the middle of the city, though they can be spotted in areas that have native flowering shrubs, including along the LA River and in the Museum’s Nature Gardens. More likely, you’ll see them moving from flower to flower in native shrubland. If you follow their flight, you may see them flying low over the ground looking for their burrows. If you’re really lucky, you might spot a female stalking her tarantula prey.
A large insect with a steely-blue exoskeleton and bright orange wings, the tarantula wasp eats nectar and is not interested in stinging humans (though it will defend itself if you threaten it, so look but don’t touch). Males and females are almost identical in size, shape, and color, but females have curled antennae.
When a female tarantula hawk wasp is ready to lay eggs, she digs or finds an underground burrow to use as a nursery. And she stocks the pantry by hunting and capturing fresh tarantula meat for her larvae to eat.
To successfully battle a tarantula, she must sting the spider’s underbelly, paralyzing but not killing it. She then drags the incapacitated arachnid into the burrow and deposits an egg. When the egg hatches, the larva burrows into the paralyzed spider body and stays there feasting on fresh meat until it develops into an adult.
Look for tarantula hawk wasps on warm, sunny days in large open spaces with native vegetation, like Griffith Park, other parks in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains, and sometimes in urban spaces growing appropriate plants—most likely on Trips 1, 2, 15, and 20.
Polyphylla decemlineata
Attracted to porch lights in Altadena, lanterns at San Gabriel Mountain campsites, or screen doors of Hollywood homes, this nocturnal scarab beetle (of the family Scarabaeidae) stops people in its tracks wherever it goes. It’s part of a group of beetles known as June bugs, and emerges in summer, allowing lucky Angelenos to enjoy its colorful pattern and clumsy flight for a few short months.
Ten-lined June beetles are large (about the size of a big peanut), hairy, and brown. They get the first part of their name from the ten bold white stripes that pattern their elytra. Males and females look similar but with different antennae. Males’ specialized antennae are enlarged at the end with a number of plates, which can be held flattened together or extended like a hand with the fingers spread out. Male beetles use these extra sensitive antennae to find mates. When a female wants to announce she’s ready for mating, she settles in a tree and releases a special chemical pheromone. Sometimes these pheromones can attract swarms of ready-to-mate males.
Look for these beetles in late spring through early fall, particularly on Trips 16 and 17. If you live near Griffith Park or the Verdugo Mountains and hear something clumsily bumping into your window screen at night, this beetle might be paying you a visit.
Xylocopa varipuncta
Buzzing from flower to flower on a warm, sunny day, valley carpenter bees can be seen in our local foothills or down in the lowlands—from Burbank backyards to Paramount parks. Because they’re about the size of a pecan and have a loud buzz, they’re often mistaken for bumble bees. However, carpenter bees are solid in color—females are black and have a “naked” shiny abdomen, whereas males are tan with a “fuzzy” abdomen—bumble bees usually have distinctive bands of black and yellow-white on their bodies and are hairy nearly all over.
There are three species of carpenter bees in Southern California, and all of them feed on nectar and pollen collected from flowers. They get their carpenter name from their habit of tunneling into wood when nesting. After a female carpenter bee bores a tunnel into wood, she deposits an egg and a ball of pollen and nectar then seals it off in a small cell with a partition made of sawdust. She may make five or six cells in a tunnel, one in front of the next, each about an inch long. One cell takes about a day to construct. When she’s finished, she seals up the entrance with more sawdust. Six to eight weeks later, the eggs hatch—usually in spring—and the larvae eat the nectar and pollen before pupating and eventually emerging as young adults.
Carpenter bee nests can be found in telephone poles, old stumps, and brush piles, but also in living wood—they prefer redwood, cedar, cypress, and pine, but will also use eucalyptus.
Many people fear carpenter bees because they’re large and their buzz is formidable. But these solitary bees rarely sting. You’re more likely to be stung by a honey bee. Because they are social and live in a hive with their relatives, honey bees defend each other and can be aggressive when disturbed. Carpenter bees don’t form hives, so they’re extremely docile and not apt to sting. Also, only female bees can sting (an insect stinger is a modified ovipositor, which is an egg-laying organ). Some male bees are known to feign stinging by pumping their abdomen in a stinging motion, but all male bees lack stingers and can’t hurt you.
Valley carpenter bees can be seen buzzing around well-flowered areas in urban and suburban Los Angeles and up into the foothills. Look for them on Trips 7, 11, 12, and 21.
Papilio rumiko
The largest butterfly in our area, western giant swallowtails are usually seen in solitary flight, searching for food, a mate, or places to rest or lay eggs. They are mostly black or dark brown with yellow bands extending across the upper parts of the front and hind wings (their underwings are pale yellow).
Some butterflies in the swallowtail family have tail-like projections at the end of each hind wing, similar to the long, forked tails of swallows. These tails help keep them safe from birds and other predators. Sometimes you’ll see tails torn or missing—better to lose a small part of your wing than any part of your head, thorax, or abdomen where all your critical organs are located.
After hatching, western giant swallowtail caterpillars have excellent camouflage and are easily mistaken for bird droppings. Later stages grow up to an inch long, with dark eyespots. They can look like small snakes, a mimicry that is even more dramatic when the caterpillars are disturbed. A forked-orange organ (the osmeterium) inflates party-blower style from just behind the head, resembling a snake’s forked tongue. Inflated with fluid, it also emits an odor that’s not unpleasant to humans but is a deterrent for some species of ants and spiders.
Look for this butterfly anywhere close to citrus trees. Most easily spotted on Trips 7 and 12, but you could also see it flying down your neighborhood street seeking local gardens.
Black widow spiders and their haphazard webs used to be found throughout the LA Basin in rural and urban areas alike. They could be found inside sprinkler boxes, under woodpiles, in corners of garages, and under patio furniture. However, these spiders aren’t as common as they used to be. Today, the introduced brown widow spider is quickly taking over in urban areas, and black widows are mostly found on the urban edges and in less developed areas.
The first brown widows in California were found in 2002 by community scientists participating in the Museum’s LA Spider Survey. Those spiders were found at Van Deene Avenue Elementary School in Torrance, but now brown widows are found across the LA Basin. This turf takeover happened incredibly quickly.
Adult female black widows are hard to mistake for other spiders. Large and shiny black, they have the telltale red hourglass pattern on the underside of their abdomen. Brown widows are mottled brown, have banded legs, and have an orange hourglass. Males of both widows are much smaller and thinner.
The easiest way to identify the widows in your yard is to look at their round egg sacs. If the sac is smooth, it was laid by a black widow; if it is spiky, it’s the work of a brown widow.
Black widow venom is lethal to crickets and other ground-dwelling insects the widow eats. It’s also a potent neurotoxin for humans—black widow bites are very unlikely to kill a healthy adult, but their bites can be painful. That said, bites to people are incredibly rare—black widows are very shy and tend to only bite when being pinched or crushed. Black widow bites are most frequent when people reach into areas under rocks, wood piles, or abandoned plant pots without looking. Brown widows are even more timid than black widows. Both are active mostly at night and hide during the day.
You can find brown widows and their egg sacs in garage corners, irrigation boxes, and in cracks in walls in most urban areas of the LA Basin. Black widows like the same kinds of spots but now are uncommon in urban areas. Look amongst brush and rock piles in the drier, more rural habitats surrounding the LA Basin, such as Trips 9 and 15. Be cautious when looking for this species that you don’t hurt the spider, damage its habitat, or cause it to bite in a last-ditch effort to protect itself.
Hyles lineata
Perched attractively on stucco walls across the city or flying into homes at night, this moth is one of the most commonly photographed in our region, in part because it’s so large and colorful. White-lined sphinx moths have aerodynamic, torpedo-shaped bodies, a three-inch wingspan, and a bold white stripe along the front wing.
The sphinx name refers to caterpillar behavior—when disturbed or threatened, they lift up their front end and tuck their head under, resembling the Egyptian sphinx. Fully-grown, a white-lined sphinx moth caterpillar can be over three inches long, often dark green or black with yellow markings along the body. It also has a horn on the end of its abdomen, which is a harmless spine and doesn’t sting.
Caterpillars can be found swarming over plants of all sorts, particularly during super bloom events. However, they are well-camouflaged and surprisingly hard to spot. Adults are nectar feeders—look for one hovering over flowers, drinking nectar with its long proboscis. They frequent flower-filled urban gardens, so try finding one on Trip 7 or 12.
Argiope aurantia
In late summer and fall, yellow garden spiders and their impressive webs begin to get noticed all over town. The spiders were there all year, but eggs and spiderlings (baby spiders) are easily overlooked. Eggs, laid in fall, are well camouflaged. Spiderlings, which hatch out in spring, are about the size of a pinhead. However, the large adult spiders that skillfully string their webs between bushes in Highland Park backyards, downtown Los Angeles parks, and schoolyards all over town are showstoppers.
The yellow garden spider is a type of orb weaver, the common name for spiders in the family Araneidae, and it’s one of the showiest orb-weavers in Los Angeles. Its size and the jagged-yellow markings on its abdomen make it hard to miss. An adult female can have a leg-span as wide as a tennis ball. When she’s ready to lay an egg case, her abdomen swells and looks like a ripe grape. Males are much smaller.
Orb weaver webs are iconic—composed of many spokes connected by a spiral of silk. Yellow garden spiders further embellish their webs with designs called stabilimenta. The zig-zag webbing often aligns with the spider’s legs as she sits on the center of her web. There’s a lot of debate about the function of stabilimenta, and some scientists think this web design might help camouflage the spider.
Many orb weaver spiders will take down their webs and rebuild them each day. To save energy, they eat the old silk. This makes orb weaver webs look clean, lacking the build-up of dead insects seen in other spiders’ webs. The yellow garden spider is a meticulous house cleaner, consuming the center of the web each evening, then rebuilding in the morning.
Look for these spiders at eye level in the fall when the adults build their large webs between trees or bushes. Easiest to spot on Trips 3 and 21.
Los Angeles County is home to twenty species of bats, including the largest bat in North America, the western mastiff, and the smallest, the canyon bat. These nighttime fliers are most commonly observed in foothill, mountain, and desert areas. In summer and fall, you can see them foraging at football stadiums and golf courses where the bright lights attract large numbers of flying insects, or dipping low over Echo Park Lake and the LA River.
Contrary to legend, bats actually have good vision. Some species can see colors and UV light. But they hunt at night because that’s when their food comes out. Most bats use echolocation, which works like sonar in a submarine, to catch insects. The bat sends out very fast, high-pitched clicks, from twenty per second while cruising slowly (called search phase calls) to two hundred per second (called a feeding buzz) when closing in on dinner. Timing the gap between when the sound leaves its mouth and when it bounces off a juicy moth and returns, helps the bat locate objects even in complete darkness.
The largest bat in the world is a kind of fruit bat with a wingspan of nearly six feet. The western mastiff bat isn’t quite that large, but it is the biggest bat in North America. Its wings, from tip to tip, measure nearly two feet across, and its hunting clicks are audible to humans. Thought to be gone from Los Angeles, western mastiffs were detected in 2012 near Griffith Park. America’s smallest bat, the canyon bat, can be found in Los Angeles too. Fully grown, it weighs about as much as a ripe grape.
Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight, but they are more similar to us than you might guess. The bones that make up a bat’s wing are the same as the bones in our own arms and hands—only their bones are thinner and a membrane of skin connects the fingers to create a wing.
Most bat hunting calls are too high pitched for us to hear, so experts use bat detectors when surveying night skies. The western mastiff bat is a unique exception and emits a low-pitched call within the range of human hearing. Canyon bats come out before dark (it belongs to a group called the vesper bats, named for evening prayers)—if you watch for them at twilight you can spot them without super-hearing or fancy equipment. Good places to try are Trips 1, 10, 13, 14, and 17.
Ursus americanus
Most Angelenos don’t think of bears as their neighbors, but people living at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains know that bears come down from the high country to explore backyards and trashcans or sometimes take a lap in the pool. When around human developments, bears become nocturnal, so in our area, hikers don’t often see them. In late summer and fall, watch for their large, seed-filled mounds of scat.
Despite their large size, black bears are quite adept at climbing trees and can run about thirty-five miles per hour, faster than the fastest human. As tourists in Yosemite have learned, they’re also strong enough to peel back a car door or trunk in search of people food.
If you come upon a black bear in its habitat and it’s just being a bear—eating, digging up termites, etc.—keep your distance and slowly leave the area. If a bear approaches you, you’ll want to scare it off. Look big—if you’re in a group, stand together and wave your arms. Talk loudly to the bear. This is usually enough to scare it away. Never play dead with a black bear—that is advice for grizzlies.
With our mild climate, only pregnant females hibernate in winter. They dig into hillsides and find spots under logs or the roots of large trees, in caves and rock crevices, and sometimes just in dense brush. Most remain active year-round.
The high, humped shoulder of the bear on California’s state flag tells you it’s not a black bear but a grizzly. Grizzly bears used to live here, and settlers adopted them as a symbol during their brief war for independence from Mexico. However, the grizzly bear has had more staying power on our flag than in our landscapes. Within fifty years of the Bear Flag Revolt, human activity made this icon scarce. The last California grizzly bear in the wild was seen in 1924.
The grizzly bear’s disappearance created a job opening for the smaller and more adaptable black bear. They started spreading south from the southern Sierra Nevada, and their range expansion sped up in 1933 when state biologists introduced twenty-seven bears into the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains. The biologists wanted to increase tourism and relocate pest bears out of Yosemite. Six bears were released near Big Bear Lake, a spot named for the vanished grizzly bears they would replace.
Black bears are found throughout the mountains, but they’re often nocturnal. You might get lucky and see a bear on Trips 16 and 17.
Lynx rufus
Bobcats are our in-between cats: smaller than a mountain lion but larger than a house cat. Tan above, lighter below, with scattered dark spots, tufted ears, and a short (bobbed), six-inch tail. More common than most people guess, the solitary bobcat is good at staying out of the way.
Bobcats are stalkers, carefully sneaking up on a potential meal and then pouncing. Unlike coyotes or black bears, bobcats don’t spend time in the produce aisle. Scientists call them obligate carnivores, which means they’re meat eaters only, with a special skill at finding and catching rabbits, gophers, and ground squirrels. They’ll eat smaller things (insects, mice, birds, and lizards) and bigger things (all the way up to deer), but rabbit-sized mammals are their specialty. Sadly, their emphasis on small prey and their meat-only diet makes them vulnerable to the rat poison some Angelenos use in their yards.
Typically very secretive, bobcats avoid contact with humans and are mostly nocturnal, resting in a den or under a dense bush during the day, then covering many miles at night. One animal may have multiple dens. These can be inside an old tree, in a hollow of a cliff, under a brush pile, or even along the edge of the freeway.
Once hunted for its fur and persecuted in misguided predator control campaigns, the bobcat has since recovered across most of its range. It can be found now from Canada to Mexico and California to Maine. It shows a remarkable ability to fit into all sorts of habitats, including snowy high mountains, coastal habitat, wetlands, and the summer heat of Death Valley. It even thrives, generally unseen, in the middle of Griffith Park.
Bobcats live in all wild habitats, from deserts to coastal scrub. Studies with camera traps prove they are more common than we might guess, and they can be observed in urban parks, including Griffith, Franklin Canyon, Elysian, and Debs. Sometimes they even venture down into neighborhoods near parks, such as Los Feliz and Silver Lake. Particular trips to try include 1, 9, 13, 16, and 17.
Thomomys bottae
You’ve seen evidence of this brown, rat-sized animal even if you’ve never seen the Caddyshack nemesis itself. From the top of Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area to your local golf course, few large lawns are free of the dirt cones that tell us pocket gophers have been at work. If you do see one out of the hole, you’ll note a big head, a stocky, tubular body, and a short, hairless tail.
Different diggers dig differently. The California ground squirrel makes a clean hole and moves all the dirt away. The broad-footed mole makes volcano-shaped mounds that lack an obvious entrance hole. Pocket gopher mounds like this one are shaped like a handheld-fan, or a kidney bean, with a very obvious front door (sometimes the doorway is plugged up by dirt).
Gophers are fossorial, which means they spend most of their lives underground. They dig an underground burrow system that includes tunnels, food storage areas, and a central nest area. And it’s not just their houses that are hidden away—their grocery stores are too. If you ever see grasses or small plants being pulled down into the ground, that’s the work of a pocket gopher feasting on roots or tubers just below the surface. Underground living is a good way to keep away from coyotes and red-tailed hawks, even if it makes gardeners and groundskeepers furious.
Most gophers have large, strong hands and claws for digging. Pocket gophers also have serious incisor teeth they use to bore their extensive tunnel systems. Their lips close behind their incisors, which prevents dirt from getting inside their mouths while excavating.
Just because a field has mound after mound of dirt doesn’t mean there’s a gopher community underground. Unlike ground squirrels, pocket gophers are solitary animals, defending their territory against other gophers and making burrow systems that can be five thousand square feet, about the size of two tennis courts. Female pocket gophers typically have slightly smaller burrow systems, usually around three thousand square feet.
Most of the year, gophers strictly defend their territories, but during breeding season they may overlap. Neighboring territories are usually separated by a gopher-free buffer zone, which allows them to spend energy on tunneling instead of worrying about an encroaching neighbor.
Throughout the basin and foothills where loose soil is present. Common in grassy yards, parks, and fields, including on Trips 3, 6, 11, and 18.
Otospermophilus beecheyi
Sometimes, there’s a whole community living under your feet. From vacant lots in Long Beach to San Gabriel Mountain woodlands, California ground squirrels build their underground dwellings in fields, along freeway edges, on brushy hills, and in open forest. They are colonial animals, which means they live in family groups ranging from a few squirrels to over one hundred.
Ground squirrel colonies live in a network of tunnels. Each tunnel can reach up to thirty-five feet long, and dive down as deep as thirty feet. They lead to nesting chambers where babies are born and cared for, food storage areas, and even underground bathrooms. Although colony members share this communal home, the adults are pretty independent and maintain their own entrances.
The ground squirrel’s underground condo complex is used by many other species. Western toads and other amphibians seek shelter in the cool, humid tunnels. These houseguests will spend the majority of their lives in the burrows, enjoying the damp air and feasting on beetles, worms, and other small critters. Snakes also use them, both to find ground squirrel meals and for shelter.
Even when the squirrels have moved out, burrowing owls will enlarge tunnels to use as a home. Foxes and badgers will do the same, sometimes after making a meal of the original owner!
The California ground squirrel is the color of dirt, which provides good camouflage against aerial predators such as hawks. It has speckled, grayish brown fur and a long tail. It might look a bit like two other common Southern California squirrels (the western gray and the eastern fox squirrels), but the ground squirrel is plain brown and has a slimmer, less showy tail. It also doesn’t climb trees—the highest off the ground it might go is to perch on a fencepost, log, boulder, or tall bush when acting as lookout.
These squirrels feed during daylight, so you can see them all day long. Their diet includes grasses, grass seeds, and other vegetation (they can be a real terror in a garden), but also berries, acorns, mushrooms, bird eggs, insects, and even small animals like mice and voles.
Perched on a fence or tall rock, some squirrels stand guard while the others sun themselves or find food. The lookouts not only warn of potential predators but also say which ones are approaching. Rapidly repeated whistles and loud chattering means a coyote, fox, or other mammal is on the prowl. A single whistle let out while sprinting for cover means a winged predator like a red-tailed hawk is scanning from above. And slowly repeated, sporadic whistles mean a snake is in the area.
Where there are ground squirrels, there are often rattlesnakes. Although alarm calls announcing a coyote or hawk trigger squirrels to sprint for a burrow, their snake alarm call sparks the opposite response. Squirrels will start scanning for the predator, and once spotted, a squirrel will boldly approach, even within the snake’s striking distance. Their confidence comes from their incredible ability to dodge strikes, and also because they have some resistance to rattlesnake venom. Nevertheless, rattlesnakes are major squirrel predators. They eat an especially large number of young squirrels, which have less snake experience and, because they are smaller, less resistance to the venom.
In addition to calling, squirrels approach rattlesnakes and tail flag (wave their tail in the air from side-to-side) to tell the snake “I see you” and warn other squirrels of the danger. Snakes strike less often at tail-flagging squirrels, and tail-flagging squirrels are more likely to dodge a strike. After tail flagging, snakes are also more likely to abandon an ambush site because the element of surprise is lost.
Look for California ground squirrels in open fields. They like areas where the grass is short and the views are long so they can spot any approaching predators—they avoid areas with dense grass or lots of trees. Found on many of the listed trips, and especially likely on Trips 1, 2, 3, 5, 11, and 18.
Canis latrans
Somebody encountering a solo coyote at night might mistake it for an escaped pet. On closer inspection, the coyote’s narrow snout, pointed ears, buff-colored fur, and long and bushy tail all reveal that this is not Fido out for a midnight stroll. This is Los Angeles’s ultimate survivor.
From Koreatown to the Hollywood Bowl, the nimble and quick-witted coyote can live in a lot of places, and scientists are just beginning to study them closely in the city’s urban core. Their flexibility is partly because of their social structures and their wide-ranging diets. But it’s also because they know how to make do with forgotten pieces of landscape. We rarely think about storm drains, power line rights of way, or railroad tracks, but these are all coyote highways, linking one island of habitat to another. There’s a downside though—their wide-ranging behavior makes them vulnerable to cars.
Coyotes can find a meal just about anywhere, eating rodents, rabbits, snakes, frogs, birds, insects, fish, roadkill, trash, fruit, seeds, grass, and even deer. They are among the most successful of our native urban explorers. But like bobcats, the coyote’s preference for small mammals and ability to hunt in backyards makes it vulnerable to rat poison. And it’s true—they do eat the occasional unsupervised pet, so be sure you don’t let yours stray at night.
Coyotes, like other members of the dog family, maintain social status through a variety of signals, including scent marking, body language, and vocalizations. Here’s our version of. . .
A tentative, huffing woof is a cautionary note—”stay back, partner, until I figure out what you are.”
A simple bark is an alarm, warning of a potential long-distance threat.
A woo-oo-wow call is a greeting to other coyotes.
A lone howl, called a herald bark, is like a formal hello. “This is who I am. This is what I’m doing here.”
The whole pack joining in to yip-yip-yippy-kai-aye might be a way of asserting control over a home range, warning rival groups the territory is occupied.
As they fill the night with a canine chorus, it’s no wonder coyotes are nicknamed the song dogs.
Coyotes are present at almost all sites in the book, though less expected in the densest parts of the urban center. Hear or see them in Griffith Park (Trip 9), most commonly at sunrise, sunset, and after dark. Other good sites include Trips 1, 13, 14, and 20.
Ovis canadensis nelsoni
The desert bighorn sheep is the ace rock climber of the animal world, able to navigate sheer cliffs with casual ease. Once found in mountains throughout the American West, bighorn sheep numbers dropped to fewer than 20,000 animals due to overhunting, diseases brought in with domestic sheep, and habitat loss. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has tracked bighorn since 1976—about four hundred bighorns live in our local mountains today. They are a desert subspecies, able to go weeks without water.
When two strong-willed people disagree, we say they butt heads. During the rut (fall breeding season), male bighorns really do butt heads, crashing into each other headfirst to establish dominance. They can be going as fast as twenty miles per hour when they hit. Why don’t they get serious injuries (or at least bad headaches)? Inside the bones that make up the skull are a network of reinforcements and air-filled sinuses that protect their brains.
Both male and female bighorn sheep are sandy brown, with a pale circle on their butts. They are heavier-bodied than a deer, and almost always seen on a hillside or ridge. Both male and female bighorn sheep have horns. Even young sheep have them, though at first theirs stick straight up like two baby carrots. Young males and females have horns that don’t curve very far, but on dominant males, the horns sweep down and around into a full circle. Because a bighorn sheep’s horns never stop growing, they are a rough indicator of age and sex. The heaviest adult male horns can weigh thirty pounds. Bighorn, indeed.
What’s the difference between antlers and horns? Antlers are made of bone that grows from the pedicel, a bony extension of the skull. Antlers grow and are shed every year, usually only by males. Horns have a bony core that extends from the skull and an outer layer of keratin, the same material that makes your fingernails. Horns aren’t shed—they grow throughout the animal’s life.
To avoid becoming a mountain lion’s dinner, bighorn sheep stay in small groups for protection—the more eyes to keep watch, the better. They also prefer steep, open slopes that are hard for predators to traverse. For much of the year, males and females stay in separate groups. The rams stay in a bachelor herd and the ewes and young in their own group. In summer, the groups come together for breeding then separate again in the fall.
These are sturdy, tough animals, willing to eat cactus (often bashing spines away with their horns) and able to navigate the most rugged, spectacular terrain, but they face threats we often don’t think about. Herds of domestic sheep grazing in or near the bighorns’ home territories is a problem. Not only is there a limited amount of grass and water, but bighorns can catch a kind of pneumonia from domestic sheep and cattle that can wipe out an entire herd in less than a few months.
The best place to see them locally is around Mount Baldy. They migrate seasonally, moving lower down the mountainside in winter. For details see Trip 17.
Puma concolor
Prowling under the Hollywood sign, crossing eight-lane freeways, or hunting mule deer above Malibu, the mountain lion is the ghost among us. Though rarely seen, it’s present in all our local mountains: Santa Monicas, Santa Susanas, Simi Hills, Verdugos, San Bernardinos, and San Gabriels.
Mountain lions, also called pumas or cougars, have the widest natural range of any large cat in the world. They live all the way from Alaska to Patagonia. Once found across the entire United States, overhunting of the cats and their main prey, deer, resulted in their extinction in eastern states. (The one exception is an endangered subspecies called the Florida panther that lives in the Everglades.)
Adults are solid tan with a long, black-tipped tail. Cubs have spots like a bobcat but always have a long tail. Cubs also have deep blue eyes for the first few months, then their eyes turn golden yellow and remain so through adulthood. They can grow up to eight feet long. Just about every naturalist hopes to see a mountain lion someday. It’s a special treat. More likely you’ll come across footprints or scat.
Hunted in California until 1990, the species is now protected, and the overall statewide population is recovering. Freeways chop up their ranges, however, making it hard for young animals to disperse, and hard for new animals to meet up and reproduce.
Scientists track mountain lions using radio and GPS collars, so we know where they go and roughly how many there are in the Santa Monica, Santa Susana, and Verdugo Mountains. This tracking helps biologists identify preferred travel routes and possible choke points where they can’t easily get from point A to B. Tracking the pumas’ movements allows scientists to study how an increasingly fragmented landscape affects the cats’ population.
This work shows us that wildlife crossings under and over local freeways would help a lot. Mountain lions need room to roam. The typical home range of an adult male is two hundred square miles (just under half the size of the entire city of Los Angeles), yet that’s not always possible. P-22, the famed bachelor of Griffith Park, has a home range of just eight square miles, the smallest known home range of any mountain lion ever studied.
Ninety percent of a mountain lion’s diet in the Santa Monica Mountains is mule deer, but they will eat anything from seals to wood-rats. Mountain lions living along the city/wilderness boundary have gotten sick from rat poison in their food. Other threats include mountain lions killing other mountain lions and vehicular collisions. The first results from not being able to move around and expand into vacant territories, the second from the threat of cars and motorcycles as they try to do so.
In Southern California, urbanization has restricted mountain lions to less developed hills and mountains. If you hope to see one, spending time in prime habitat helps, but most sightings are a matter of luck. Places with the best probability include Trips 1, 2, 16, and 17.
Odocoileus hemionus
This swivel-eared, long-legged animal is a favorite mountain lion food and surprisingly capable of hiding in plain sight in our foothills and mountains. Sometimes they’re more visible, like when they’re eating flowers off Forest Lawn graves or trotting across a road in the San Gabriel Mountains. Sharp-eyed commuters have spotted them from the 405 in the Sepulveda Pass and next to the 2 Freeway in Glendale, and the deer that graze the lawns at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had their own Twitter feed.
They’re called mule deer because of the size and shape of their ears, which, like a mule’s, are tall and active. A mule deer can hear well, see even better, and smell even better than that. With eyes on the side of its head, a deer can see 310 degrees around. If you were a deer, in one view you could see everything from behind your left ear all the way around in front of you and back around to behind your right ear.
Only male mule deer have antlers, which they shed each winter and start growing anew each spring. When growing, the antlers are covered in velvet, which is full of blood vessels that bring oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone beneath. They shed the velvet in late summer or early fall when their antlers reach full size. Males then use the antlers to battle and establish dominance. Dominant males breed more, contributing more of their genes to the next generation.
Baby deer, called fawns, can make a bleating sound like sheep and adults can bark and grunt, but on average these are silent animals. They eat vegetation, browsing twigs and leaves then digesting them in a multi-chambered stomach. Like a cow, a deer spends part of each day chewing cud—after it eats food it continues to spit it back up and chew it again to get all the nutrition possible. They also eat grass, weeds, acorns . . . and the prize flowers in homeowners’ gardens.
Although they are seemingly widespread, there have been no formal studies conducted on mule deer in our area. Surprisingly, researchers don’t truly understand the local population, despite their impact on vegetation and mountain lion diets.
Forested and brushy areas of mountains, canyons, foothills, and their neighboring communities. Watch for them at dusk and dawn on Trips 1, 9, 16, and 17.
Procyon lotor
Brazen and widespread, the northern raccoon can be found poking its head out of storm drains, knocking over trashcans in your backyard, and photo-bombing camera traps in Griffith Park. They’re so adaptable that researchers have found more of them in urban areas with human resources than in nearby natural areas where they’d have to work harder to find food and deal with competitors. Thanks to their bold curiosity, bandit face mask, and striped tail, most everybody knows them. Few animals are so easy to identify—and so fun to watch.
Raccoons swim well and spend time around water, where they seek out much of their food. In Los Angeles this means they like streams, ditches, runoff basins, culverts, and backyard ponds. They eat a good amount of aquatic life, including clams and non-native mini-lobster lookalikes called crayfish.
Out of the water, their wide menu includes grubs, worms, pet food, birdseed, trash, and even baby birds. They scavenge carrion and also make use of the fruit and vegetable side of the menu, including berries, walnuts, and wild grapes. It may seem mean, but they do earn their nickname—trash pandas.
Urban legend holds that raccoons wash their food before eating it. This behavior is tied more to their incredible sense of touch than to tidiness. Raccoons have extremely sensitive front paws covered in a rough, callused layer. When wet, this layer becomes softer and more sensitive, allowing a raccoon to carefully knead food, clean off grit, and check for any parts that might be bad to eat. This behavior gives the northern raccoon its scientific species name: lotor means washer. The digits on their front paws also have whiskers, modified hairs that connect to nerves, further increasing their sense of touch.
In the mud along a creek, raccoon tracks are among the easiest to learn because their back feet leave a very human-shaped track, sort of like a miniature human hand with long fingers and sharp claws.
Raccoons live along streams and in heavy undergrowth in foothill and mountain regions, but they are very well adapted to life in the suburbs and city. Most trips offer a chance to see them; besides the LA River, consider Trips 1, 8, 18, and 21.
Mephitis mephitis
The striped skunk is famous for its black and white colors and the noxious spray it shoots from glands under its bushy tail. It can accurately aim this yellow stink spray for ten feet. Even if you’ve never seen one in your neighborhood, you know when it’s around. If a skunk gets hit by a car, the street will carry the smell for many days afterwards.
Their black and white stripes are good examples of “aposematic coloration,” which advertises their chemical defense. Potential predators learn to recognize and avoid animals with these warning markings, though some, like the great horned owl, aren’t deterred and will eat them anyway. Some dogs also haven’t learned to keep their distance—if yours comes home smelling like a skunk, you can find a number of remedies online.
The skunk is an opportunistic omnivore, meaning it likes to eat most anything, from insects to mice to crabs to bird eggs to fallen fruit. They’re also famous lawn specialists, using their long curved claws to dig for below-ground grubs.
In the nineteenth century, skunks were a popular way to help keep barns free of pests. They were also trapped for their fur. By the 1950s and 1960s pet skunks were a fad. Supposedly they could be housebroken (and their scent glands removed) and were quite affectionate. It’s now illegal to have skunks as pets in California.
Skunks thrive in many parts of our natural and built environment, even finding shelter under people’s houses and sheds. They’re usually nocturnal and often found in edge habitats and urban waterways. It’s most productive to look for them around dusk along the margins of fields, by golf courses, or around large parks.
Places to try include Trips 11, 19, and 20. A really reliable skunk viewing spot is Trip 6; just after sunset, skunks often descend from the hills in search of trash and dropped food among the grassy picnic areas. Prepare yourself for cuteness overload.
Western gray squirrels are native to this area, but because of their dependence on forest habitat, they’re largely absent from the LA Basin and much more likely to be found in our local foothills and mountains. Native to the eastern half of the United States, eastern fox squirrels have been part of the landscape since 1904, when they were released at the Sawtelle Veterans Home in West Los Angeles. Civil War veterans brought them to California to keep as pets and possibly for the soup pot. As happens, some pets escaped or were released. Today, with over seven thousand miles of overhead utility lines acting as superhighways in the sky, eastern fox squirrels are spreading across the LA Basin (at rates estimated up to 4.25 miles per year).
There’s an overlap zone where the foothills meet the city—and it’s here that the native western gray and the non-native eastern fox squirrel engage in a turf war. Gray squirrels are more sensitive to urban development than eastern fox squirrels due to their limited diet, habitat requirements (oak woodland or mixed coniferous forests and trees with branches that connect), shyness, and slower reproductive rate. The eastern fox squirrel may be winning the turf war because it’s more aggressive, more adaptable to disturbed landscapes, and less afraid of humans.
Telling the two apart is easy. The western gray squirrel is typically larger and gray with a pure white belly. Eastern fox squirrels are gray-brown above with an orange-to-rusty brown belly—its bushy gray tail has orange highlights.
Western grays use the forest as their grocery store—they eat acorns, seeds, pine nuts, green vegetation (like buds, young stems, and leaves), fruit, and mushrooms. When food is abundant they collect the surplus and store it for later when times might be hard. They bury the acorns and nuts a couple inches deep and find them later by smell.
They also eat mushrooms, and their absolute favorite is truffles. In fall and spring, truffles, the same kind chefs pay thousands of dollars for per pound, can make up more than half of a western gray squirrel’s diet.
The eastern fox squirrel is a generalist that survives on whatever food is available: fruit, Fig Newtons, French fries, or fairy ring mushrooms. It’s a raider of yards, trashcans, and bird feeders. Once, Museum scientists caught them on a Nature Gardens camera trap eating a slice of pizza. A more natural, healthy diet includes acorns, seeds, pine nuts, flower buds, insects, and bird eggs.
Western gray squirrels and eastern fox squirrels can be loud. And to drive home their message, they will often also wave their big, bushy tails. Squirrels have multiple calls and also multiple types of tail flags, but the most common are alarm signals. Alarm calls include kuks and quaas. The kuks are repeated and, typically, the squirrel is flicking or flagging its tail. Other squirrels that hear or see these alarm signals learn a predator could be nearby, and the predators learn that they have been detected. With the element of surprise gone, some predators may simply give up.
In Griffith Park and the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains, look for western gray squirrels in areas with lots of trees (though they’re absent in the section between the 101 and 405 freeways). Your best chance is to watch while hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains, and in the pine trees of adjacent foothill communities. Trips 15, 16, 17, and 18 provide good opportunities.
Eastern fox squirrels are a common part of our daily wildlife experience, found on college campuses, cemeteries, large urban parks, as well as many neighborhoods with tree-lined streets and overhead utility lines. They can be seen on many of the field excursions, including Trips 3, 7, and 21.
Didelphis virginiana
With its off-pink tail, scruffy fur, and wide-load waddle, the Virginia opossum will never win the animal beauty contest. It’s another city animal with a broad diet that includes insects, worms, fruit, pet food, garbage, and carrion. Unlike skunks and racoons, they don’t dig much, so cause less damage to yards and houses—some gardeners love opossums for their ability to eat pesky snails and slugs. Whether eating dog food from an unattended bowl, tightrope-walking along power lines, or pretending to be dead, the opossum has shown a remarkable ability to adapt to urban Los Angeles.
About the size of a house cat but with a pointed snout and long, naked tail, the opossum is sometimes mistaken for a large rat. Not only is it not a rodent, it is not like any other animal in this book.
The Virginia opossum makes it into the record books several ways. It’s North America’s only native marsupial, a group of mammals with a pouch (or marsupium) where their babies develop after they’re born. Familiar marsupials include Australia’s kangaroos and koalas.
It can claim another first-place ribbon for its fifty teeth—more than any North American mammal. When threatened, it opens its mouth wide to show off these teeth, but this is mostly a bluff—if further hassled, it will pretend to be dead (hence the term playing possum). Lying down with its mouth open and dripping saliva, it exudes a fluid from its anal glands that smells like death and decay. The opossum will remain motionless in this semi-catatonic state for minutes or hours, hoping to convince a would-be predator that it’s too diseased or decomposed to eat.
Another special attribute is the opossum’s prehensile tail. It can grasp like a monkey’s tail and help the animal climb. They sometimes wrap their tails around leaves and other debris to carry the material home.
As the name reveals, the Virginia opossum isn’t native here. It was brought to California by people who kept them as oddities and pets. The first opossum was recorded in LA County in 1906. It has become widespread on the West Coast from as far north as British Columbia down into Baja California.
Though marsupials famously have a pouch in which their young develop, they aren’t born in that special pocket. They have to find their way there on their own, immediately after being born. Opossum babies are very small—at birth, they are about the size of a honey bee! These tiny, blind, pink babies (called joeys) must crawl two inches to the pouch, and no matter how many joeys were born (sometimes over twenty), mom only has thirteen nipples available. Later, as they develop, the mother opossum carries the babies on her back.
This urban animal lives in, under, and near our homes. If you don’t see one in your neighborhood, keep watch in the early evening on Trips 8, 10, 11, and 24.
Rana catesbeiana
This is one big frog, with a booming voice to match. American bullfrogs are the largest frogs in the United States. The biggest can reach over eight inches, with hind legs up to ten inches long. In Los Angeles, they’re often heard but not seen. Listen for the distinctive deep and droning call as you stroll near lakes and reservoirs.
Bullfrogs are native to the central and eastern United States. However, people have moved them around so much the exact borders of their native range are unknown. We’ve even introduced them to Canada, Mexico, western Europe, Asia, South America, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean islands. They’ve caused significant problems in all these places and are listed as one of the world’s worst invasive species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
In the mid and late 1800s, as California’s population was exploding, so too was the demand for frog legs. The largest frog in California at that time was the native California red-legged frog, but in less than fifty years, its numbers were dramatically reduced by overhunting and habitat loss. Importing and releasing bullfrogs in local waterways provided a new, reliable, and easy-to-find source of frog legs. Plus, bigger frogs meant bigger legs.
Unfortunately, people quickly discovered that bullfrog meat wasn’t as tasty as red-legged frog meat so hunting pressure remained high on the native frogs. Later, as interest in eating frog legs dried up, bullfrogs were free from their limited hunting pressure. With an increasing number of cattle ponds and reservoirs to thrive in, their numbers skyrocketed. Red-legged frogs haven’t been as lucky.
More bullfrogs means bad news for just about any critter smaller than a bullfrog. Bullfrogs will eat almost anything they can fit inside their mouths, including all the usual frog foods like insects, spiders, and earthworms, but also small mammals, birds, snakes, and turtles. Studies have found that smaller frogs, including young bullfrogs, can make up more than 80 percent of an adult bullfrog’s diet. It’s no wonder this generalist predator is thriving.
The problem isn’t just that people brought bullfrogs to California, but that they also built perfect habitats for them. In the past, our long, dry summers were a big problem for bullfrogs because they need a permanent source of water for their large tadpoles to develop. But cattle ponds and reservoirs stocked with non-native fish and crayfish are perfect for them.
The good news is the bullfrog problem has a solution. If ponds are allowed to dry down in summer, bullfrog tadpoles don’t have enough time to fully develop and populations can be eradicated.
Bullfrogs can be found in areas with permanent water, which in the LA area mostly means man-made ponds and reservoirs. Ballona Freshwater Marsh (Trip 5) and the ponds in Franklin Canyon (Trip 8) have bullfrogs, including some absolute giants. They can also be found on Trips 3, 14, and 21.
Phrynosoma blainvillii
The flat, round, toad-like appearance of horned lizards gives them their common name, horny toad, and their genus name—Phrynosoma means toad-bodied. Their large, blunt heads, and crown of rearward facing spines makes them easy to recognize. They also have spiny scales on their back and tail. They can be yellowish, brown, or reddish brown, often matching the soil and rocks where they live. The patterns on their body, including a pair of dark blotches on the neck and dark wavy bars on the back, work with their jagged spines to break up the outline of their bodies and keep them camouflaged. If you see a rock scurry for cover, take a closer look; it’s probably a horned lizard.
Camouflage is a great first line of defense for horned lizards, but it’s not the last. If a predator grabs a horned lizard, the lizard will rock its head from side to side, stabbing with its horns. Some snakes have been found dead with a horned lizard stuck part way down their throat, horns protruding through the snake’s body!
If a predator is persistent and neither camouflage nor defensive horns work, horned lizards have yet another back-up plan. They can shoot blood from their eyes—or more precisely, from a sinus that sits just below their eyes. They try to shoot the attacker in the face and have surprisingly good aim. Coyotes, foxes, domestic dogs, and bobcats all find the blood distasteful enough to end their attack. Scientists haven’t discovered what makes the blood so repulsive to dogs and cats, but many think it’s toxins from the ants that make up a major part of a horned lizard’s diet. In the few reported cases in which horned lizard blood was shot into the eye of an unsuspecting human, the person reported intense pain and short-term vision loss. Consider some chic protective eyewear if you want to get up close and personal with these southwest dwellers.
Blainville’s horned lizards used to occur from the LA Basin and adjoining valleys up to about 7500 feet in the local mountains. They were common neighborhood lizards for many Angelenos up into the 1950s. Over time these lizards have become a rarer sight, and they’re now almost entirely gone from lower elevations. The declines are caused by conversion of land for agriculture, increasing urban development, and especially the spread of non-native Argentine ants. Horned lizards specialize in eating large-bodied native ants, especially harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex species). They don’t eat the invasive newcomers, so as their preferred food has disappeared, so have they.
Look for these lizards in areas where you see big-bodied ants such as harvester and carpenter ants. Horned lizards can be found in coastal sand dunes, grassland, scrub, chaparral, and forest areas and are most likely to be seen late February through June. They still occur at higher elevations in the Santa Monicas and Verdugos, as well as throughout much of the San Gabriel Mountains. Trips 1 and 16 are your best bets.
Taricha torosa
California newts begin life in the water. As creeks dry up in the summer months, the larvae absorb their gills and fin-like tail and transform into small versions of the adults. Then they leave the water and spend the next few years on land, growing bigger in underground burrows, beneath logs, and in areas with moist soil and plenty of insects and small critters to eat.
Once they reach adulthood, newts return to the water to breed. During and shortly after winter rain storms, dozens, sometimes thousands, of adult newts make their annual migration to their local creek or pond. Pond breeders often arrive toward the start of the rainy season, but many creek breeders arrive later, after the threat of floods has mostly passed. If you hike creek trails at this time of year, you may witness this amazing migration.
Males stay in the water for a few months—females stop by for much shorter periods to lay eggs. Because males spend months swimming around in search of females, they undergo a really dramatic change. Their rough skin becomes smooth, and their tails get bigger, flatter, and more fin-like. Females also get smoother skin, but a much less dramatic tail change. In early summer, males leave the breeding site and once again take on their typical rough-skin and standard tail—until the next breeding season when the whole process starts again.
During the annual migration events, newts wander across the landscape as if they have no fear of predators, trudging through open areas in the middle of the day. Their confidence comes from their incredible toxicity. Newts harbor an extremely potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin, which can affect the nervous system if ingested. If you touch one, be sure to wash your hands and avoid touching your eyes or mouth.
From above, newts’ rough, brown skin provides great camouflage. If a sharp-eyed predator does try to grab it, the newt arches its back and raises its tail, exposing its bright orange underside, a warning of the newt’s toxicity.
Some raccoons, otters, and ravens have learned to flip newts over, slit open the belly, and selectively eat the inner parts that don’t have toxins. If you find a newt carcass—sometimes turned partially inside-out—it’s a tell-tale sign that a clever predator won the battle.
Thanks to introduced predators, finding newts in Southern California isn’t as easy as it once was. A creek with crayfish or a pond with lots of bullfrogs and mosquitofish is unlikely to have newts. However, they still live in the larger coastal-flowing creeks of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains. Try Trips 1, 4, 14, and 15. Remember: look but don’t touch, and leave their aquatic and terrestrial habitat undisturbed.
Uta stansburiana
In many parts of the desert southwest, these small, grayish-brown lizards are the most abundant lizard species. In the LA area, they can be difficult to tell apart from the larger western fence lizard. If you have a side view, the telltale blueish black side-blotch just behind the front limbs, for which the species is named, is an easy giveaway. Side-blotched lizards also have a double row of dark blotches or crescents down their backs, which are covered by small granular scales unlike the large, spiny scales of the fence lizards.
Side-blotched lizards like open areas with scattered rocks and boulders they can perch on and keep watch for predators. If they spot one, it’s a quick dash into hiding spots beneath or between the rocks. These lizards are rock and ground dwellers—they don’t use fences, branches, or logs nearly as much as the western fence lizard.
Common side-blotched lizards have brightly colored throat regions. Males can have different colored patches on their throats, and their throat color usually matches up with their mating behaviors. Orange-throated males guard territories, mating with the females that reside there. Blue-throated males guard individual females. And yellow-throated males are sneaky. They mimic females to sneak past other males to find a mate. Blue-throated males can usually chase off the yellow-throated sneakers but are usually chased off by aggressive orange-throated males. Each color type can beat one type but loses to another—it’s lizard rock-paper-scissors.
This dynamic results in a year-to-year population cycle (remember, these lizards typically live only about one year). When orange territory-guarders are most common, the yellow-throated sneaker males have higher reproductive success. The next year when the yellow males are most common, the blue-throated mate-guarders do best. When blue-throats are common, the territorial orange-throated males then do well, repeating the cycle.
We may call this lizard the “common” side-blotched lizard, and it is the most abundant lizard in many parts of its range, but it’s much less common in the LA Basin than it once was. They avoid grasslands and areas with thick vegetation, so irrigation is a problem for them. As the arid and semi-arid habitats they prefer, like sandy washes, broken chaparral, and open forest with little understory, have been invaded by non-native grasses and converted to neighborhoods, strip malls, and industrial areas, they’ve gotten scarce.
Today, you’re most likely to find side-blotched lizards in the foothills, but remnant populations can still be found in the LA Basin. For example, the Sepulveda Basin (Trip 3), the Bette Davis Picnic Area near Griffith Park, the Bowtie Parcel and other dry areas of the former Taylor Yard (near Trip 10), and little bits of open habitat along the lower LA and San Gabriel Rivers still have them. Similarly, they can be found in the isolated hills that rise out of the LA Basin including the Baldwin Hills (Trip 6), Palos Verdes Peninsula, and Chino-Puente Hills (Trip 20).
Look for side-blotched lizards in open, rocky areas with scattered vegetation anytime it’s warm, and especially in spring and summer. Trips 1, 2, 13, 16, and 25 also have them.
Batrachoseps major
The garden slender salamander is brown, with a pale gray belly and short, stubby limbs. It’s a little bulkier than other slender salamanders, which keeps it from drying out too fast, allowing it to survive in its favored habitat, coastal sage scrub and chaparral. Nevertheless, it spends drier months underground, using earthworm burrows, tunnels left by decomposing roots, and mammal burrows as passageways and hideouts. In wetter months, and in areas with sprinklers, you can find them above ground cruising for worms, earwigs, caterpillars, and other small insects to eat.
Slender salamanders are on the menu for alligator lizards and several species of birds and snakes in California. Luckily, they have a variety of incredible defense strategies. When harassed, they often curl into a tight coil. By rapidly uncoiling, they can propel themselves into the air, landing nearly a foot away where they remain motionless in hopes of avoiding detection. They can also rapidly flip or flex their long bodies to cartwheel away from danger.
If leaping to safety doesn’t work, their skin excretes a glue-like substance so sticky it can glue a hungry snake’s jaws together or glue parts of the snake to itself so it can’t keep attacking. They’ll also wrap their tails around the snake’s neck to prevent it from swallowing. If none of those defenses work, slender salamanders, like many lizards, can drop their tails. The tail wiggles around distracting the predator while the rest of the salamander hides or crawls to safety.
Los Angeles is actually home to three species of slender salamanders, all of which are difficult to tell apart, even for experts. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1960s that scientists realized the three species were distinct. By then, the city was heavily developed, with much of the remaining habitat in private property.
The Museum’s community science projects like RASCals are helping scientists finally collect data on where the different species are found. They’re also studying whether urban development is reducing and fragmenting the salamanders’ habitats, or whether the increased use of water through irrigation is creating new opportunities in residential areas.
Easiest to find in the winter months, especially right after rain. Look for them on the ground in the early evening, or search under flower pots, logs, and other objects any time of day. Just be careful to set those objects back in the exact same spot to preserve the hiding place and not squish any little critters. You can find them on Trips 12, 14, and 25, and in yards, vacant lots, or other urban open spaces.
Pituophis catenifer
The gophersnake is the longest snake in our area and also one of the most commonly encountered. They have a tan or yellow background color with a series of brown or black blotches down the middle of their backs. This pattern is excellent camouflage. When predators like hawks, foxes, coyotes, bobcats or people do find a gophersnake, it puts on a big act that looks much like a rattlesnake’s defensive display. It raises off the ground, inflates with air to look bigger, hisses loudly, and flattens its head to look more triangular like a rattler’s. It also shakes its tail, which in dry grass or leaves creates a rattling sound.
The gophersnake hopes this bluff will cause any potential predators to think it is a venomous rattlesnake that should be left alone. Unfortunately, if the attacker is a human, they might be more likely to try and kill it.
As you’d guess, gophersnakes do eat gophers, and you’ll often find them cruising around grassland habitat in search of the subterranean mammals. But they’re also dietary generalists who eat ground squirrels, mice, rabbits, other small mammals, lizards, and bird eggs and nestlings (they’re excellent tree climbers).
Gophersnakes tend to be active hunters, seeking out burrows and nests. They usually kill with constriction, wrapping coils around their prey and squeezing it to death.
From coastal dune habitat to high in the mountains and down into the deserts. They especially like grassland and scrub habitats, including coastal sage scrub and chaparral. Trips 1, 9, 13, 14, 15, and 19 are best for seeing these attractive serpents.
Pseudacris regilla
These frogs come in a variety of greens and browns and are able to change the darkness of their shading (light green frogs can quickly change to dark green, and tan frogs to dark brown) for excellent camouflage. Many have dark patterns on their backs and upper legs, and, regardless of color or pattern, they all have a dark mask or band running across their face and through the eye. The enlarged discs on their fingers and toes act like suction cups, helping the frogs climb.
Frog calls are just like bird calls; both are produced mostly by males to attract females and announce territory ownership. As with birds, each frog species has a slightly different call. Nevertheless, people all around the world seem to think that frogs say ribbit, just like cows say moo.
In fact, only one species of frog in the entire world says ribbit—the Pacific treefrog! Because it calls loudly and is relatively common in and around Los Angeles, this frog was easily recorded for background sounds in movies and TV shows. Although they’re only found in western North America, you can hear Pacific treefrogs in movie and TV scenes set all over the world. The frogs calling in the background as Rambo runs through the jungles of Southeast Asia were likely recorded in LA foothills.
During the late winter and spring breeding season, you might hear a ribbit or two during the day—but return at night and you could experience a deafening chorus as dozens of males try to attract a female.
Pacific treefrogs make other calls too and each one serves a different function. In fall and early winter, especially after rains, they’ll give infrequent, short, one-syllable calls, often from hiding spots in burrows or shrubs. Listen for these while hiking near seasonal creeks and ponds.
Trips 1 and 14 are great places to hear and see them.
Trachemys scripta elegans
Historically, California was home to only one widespread freshwater turtle, the western pond turtle. Due to overharvesting for turtle meat, wetland loss, river channelization, and other types of habitat destruction, western pond turtles have become increasingly rare in the Central Valley and LA areas.
However, nearly every LA resident has turtles within walking distance of their home. Like bullfrogs, bass, and crayfish, the non-native red-eared slider can thrive in Southern California because we’ve built permanent water on a landscape that was historically dry in summer.
The first part of the red-eared slider’s name comes from the distinctive red stripe on the side of their heads just behind the eye. The second part comes from the habit of wild turtles sliding off logs and rocks into the water when they sense danger.
Not all red-eared sliders have the red stripe. As adult males age, they lose their coloration, their skin and shells taking on a darker appearance. These old males can easily be mistaken for the native western pond turtle, which can also sometimes be a dull brownish-gray. An easy way to tell the two apart is that western pond turtles have especially long tails, and male red-eared sliders have especially long claws on the front feet.
Typically found in urban ponds, reservoirs, and waterways—places close to cities, with an endless supply of no-longer-wanted pet turtles—red-ears are fast growers. They reach over four inches long in a few years and, in a few more, can be twice that. Females, which get larger than males, can grow to over twelve inches. Turtles that start out small and cute are soon big, smelly, and sometimes prone to bite or scratch. Once big aquariums or backyard ponds with expensive filters become necessary, some irresponsible pet owners give up and release them.
These turtles do so well in so many different places because they’re not picky eaters. Young red-ears are mostly carnivorous, eating a variety of invertebrates including insects, snails, and worms or scavenging larger meals like dead fish or birds. As they age, they eat more plants and algae, but will still scavenge on carcasses or eat the occasional live animal. In a few cases, large red-ears have even been seen pulling unsuspecting birds into the water for a feathered feast. Regardless of where they find themselves, they seem able to find plenty of food.
In huge numbers in the man-made ponds and reservoirs on Trips 3, 5, 6, 8, 19, 21, and 24.
Elgaria multicarinata
The southern alligator lizard is the most widespread lizard species in the LA area. They don’t make it into local deserts, but they can be found just about everywhere else, including the most urbanized parts of our cities. Check your backyard or the landscaping around your apartment complex; you’re very likely to find them. Although they’re widespread, you won’t often spot them without looking because they don’t bask in the sun like many other lizards. They prefer cooler, hidden areas like gardens, shrubs, and woodpiles, and sometimes beneath your refrigerator or living room sofa. Their more natural habitats include grassland, chaparral, and forest, and they’re especially fond of grassy areas along creeks.
Baby alligator lizards have a more muted appearance than the adults and are often mistaken for skinks or other lizards.
Adult alligator lizards have a slender, snake-like appearance with short limbs and a long tail. Their bodies are tan, brown, or reddish-brown with dark bars highlighted with lighter spots running across their bodies. They have relatively large heads and powerful jaws, which they sometimes hold open, exposing their teeth to warn off attackers (making them resemble their alligator namesakes). Adult males have bigger, more triangular heads than females. A narrow fold of skin on each side of the body—think of it like an elastic waistband on your favorite pair of pants—allows their bodies to expand after a large meal or as a female develops a clutch of eggs.
Starting in mid-summer, adorable baby alligator lizards start popping up. At first glance, these look like a whole different species. They lack the darker crossbars of the adults and often have a single broad stripe of red or brown down their backs. By late fall or early winter, they start to develop the more typical color pattern.
An alligator lizard’s tail can be up to twice as long as its body. Their tails are somewhat prehensile, allowing them to grasp branches. This helps with climbing shrubs and small trees—the best places to find tasty caterpillars, bird eggs, and nestlings. However, finding an adult alligator lizard with a complete, original tail is uncommon. When attacked, an alligator lizard can self-amputate its tail. The detached tail flips, flops, and flails about distracting the predator and giving the lizard a chance to escape. This ability is called tail autotomy (autotomy means self-cutting).
A new tail will grow, but it won’t be a perfect replacement. It will look slightly different than the original, have a rod made of cartilage at the center instead of bones, and won’t be as flexible or as prehensile. Tail loss can have huge consequences for the lizard. A female who has recently lost her tail may have to skip a breeding season because she has lost the energy reserves needed to develop her eggs.
Alligator lizards can be found from sea level to about 6,500 feet in the LA area, and from behind your bookshelf to under the oak tree in your favorite mountain forest. They especially like areas with a bit of moisture, so streamside habitat in the foothills or a well-watered vegetable garden are good places to look. Trips 1, 4, 8, 14, 15, 18, 19, and 20 are good alligator lizard hangouts.
Sceloporus occidentalis
Have you ever seen a local lizard doing push-ups and head bobs? If so, it was probably the western fence lizard. Often called blue bellies by kids across California, they’re the most commonly observed lizard in the LA area, occurring in a variety of habitats from urban backyards at sea level to pine forests high up in our mountains.
Western fence lizards are smallish, gray-brown lizards that bask atop walls, logs, boulders, and, of course, fences. From these overlooks, they dart out and grab prey. Adults have a vibrant blue patch on each side of their bellies, which are especially large and colorful on males. Their chin region also has a blue patch. During breeding season, some adult males will have blue specks on their backs as well, making them look bedazzled in turquoise sequins.
In addition to push-ups and head bobs, adult male fence lizards also announce territory ownership by flattening out their sides and neck region to display their bright blue patches. If a trespassing male ignores these warnings, the two are likely to fight. These battles determine the size of each male’s territory. A larger territory means more potential mates.
In the lizard world, chameleons are famous for their ability to rapidly change skin color, but western fence lizards can do it too. Male fence lizards live by the mantra “the early lizard gets the rock.” During the active season, males want to spend as much time guarding their territories as possible. In the mornings, and whenever the weather is cooler, they need to warm up quickly. Making their skin darker allows them to absorb more of the sun’s energy more quickly. They also position themselves perpendicular to the sun to maximize the amount of skin exposed to its warming rays. As the lizard warms up, he lightens in color and turns parallel to the sun’s rays to maintain a perfect operating temperature. Females can also change color, but to a lesser degree. If you see a big dark fence lizard in the morning, it’s almost certainly a male trying to warm up fast.
Western fence lizards are common residents of the LA area, though they are not as widespread in urban areas as southern alligator lizards. They’re easiest to see basking on walls, boulders, logs, low branches, and fences in spring and summer months. Trips 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, and 20 are especially good.
Crotalus oreganus
The western rattlesnake is the most commonly observed snake in our area, with the gophersnake a close second. Spring and summer have the most rattlesnake activity. In winter, they hide below ground in abandoned mammal burrows or tucked into rocky crevices, but the occasional winter warm spell will bring out a few to enjoy the sunshine.
Their coloration varies from a light tan to nearly black. A series of dark blotches running down their backs eventually expands to bars near the tail. Usually, you can quickly identify them by their wide, triangular head and the rattle at the end of their tail.
Rattlesnakes are mostly ambush hunters. While gophersnakes, kingsnakes, and other species actively search out prey, rattlesnakes set up along a common mammal pathway, like a ground squirrel trail or a mouse runway. Here, they wait, sometimes for days, for a meal to come along. They mostly eat small mammals, but will eat lizards, snakes, birds, and even frogs or the occasional insect.
In summer’s heat, rattlesnakes are mostly active at night. Their sense of smell helps them find prey in the dark. Like other snakes, they flick their tongues out and pull scent molecules into their mouths to “taste” whatever’s around them. Rattlesnakes can also sense infrared radiation, which allows them to detect things like warm mice and rats hiding nearby. This is especially useful at night when warm, little mammals are surrounded by cool evening air.
While waiting in ambush, or while out basking in the sunshine, the snake hopes its camouflage will allow it to go undetected by potential prey and by potential predators. While other snakes may flee at the approach of a person or other large, potentially deadly predator, the rattlesnake is likely to stay motionless, relying on camouflage and lack of movement.
Rattlesnakes want to go unnoticed, but if a predator gets too close, a rattlesnake will use its rattle to warn off the larger animal. The rattle is made of keratin, the same material in your fingernails. When a rattlesnake is born, it has a tiny prebutton, which is basically a cap on the tip of its tail. During the snake’s first shed, this prebutton is replaced by a button, the first segment of the rattle. With only one segment, these young rattlesnakes can’t produce any sound. Each subsequent shed produces another segment, which can then slap against each other and produce sound. It takes a few sheds before a rattle will produce the loud characteristic warning.
Rattlesnakes have maternal care, which means that moms look after the young. They also have live birth, which in our area usually takes place in the late summer. Females will find a safe spot, such as an abandoned mammal burrow, and give birth to around four to twelve young. She keeps watch over them for the first week or so and will actively defend them against potential predators. Once the babies have their first shed (usually about seven to ten days), mom and babies head their separate ways.
Rattlesnakes don’t fare well in urban areas and have disappeared entirely from the Baldwin Hills. They are, however, a commonly seen snake on hikes in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains, and there’s an isolated population on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Trips 1, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, and 20 are your best bets.
Cornu aspersum
The common garden snail is large, brown, and easy to identify. It’s the most commonly seen snail in Los Angeles and can be found on sprinkler-wet sidewalks in nearly every neighborhood, chowing down on prize vegetables in backyard gardens—even on your plate in upscale French restaurants.
The common garden snail was first introduced to California in the 1850s with escargot farms. Whether the snails escaped from the farms, or were dumped by fed up farmers, we’ll probably never know. They were likely introduced multiple times and are still (along with other species of snails and slugs) being introduced today—potted plants make perfect homes for stowaways.
This snail can lay between 30 and 120 eggs at a time. The eggs are covered in layers of protective film and a thin, calcium-rich shell. The baby snails hatch out of their eggs with tiny, delicate shells of their own.
Many gardeners don’t like this snail. It eats a large variety of fruits and vegetables—everything from carrots and cabbages to apples and apricots. Flowers are also a favorite food. In some instances, entire beds of freshly planted zinnias have been devoured in a single night.
Snails are pros at what scientists call aestivation, a prolonged dormancy to escape the frequent hot dry spells of Southern California. To retain as much moisture as possible, common garden snails retreat into their shells and hunker down. They seal off the entrance to their shell with slime, which, when it dries, looks like delicate parchment paper.
This snail is most easily seen on trips in the wetter, winter or spring months or in heavily irrigated areas like lawns. Look for them in planter beds and yards near you or keep an eye out on Trip 12.
Helminthoglypta traskii
In small pockets across Los Angeles and in our local canyons—from Tujunga Wash to the Palos Verdes Peninsula—this snail is holding on. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, it’s a critically endangered snail with dwindling numbers in the region. However, it could be living in LA backyards or parks near you!
There are at least seven species of shoulderband snail that live in California, three of which call Los Angeles home (the other two are the Southern California and transverse range shoulderbands). They’re hard to tell apart, but all three species found in the LA region have an easy-to-spot shoulderband that swirls around the shell. The Trask’s shoulderband snail (sometimes called peninsular shoulderband) has a cinnamon-brown shell with a dark chestnut-brown band. When fully grown, it’s about half the size of a common garden snail.
Nestled in paper boxes and glass vials in the Museum’s malacology collection (malacology is the study of snails, slugs, octopuses, squids, and other mollusks) are dozens of Trask’s shoulderband snail shells. There are shells from Elysian Park, Palos Verdes, Griffith Park, Arroyo Seco Canyon, Hermosa Beach, Baldwin Hills, Ballona Creek, and many locations in the San Gabriel Mountains. Almost all are from before the 1950s, allowing scientists a look back in time to see when and where Trask’s shoulderband lived in the LA area. Unfortunately, there aren’t quite enough specimens in the collection to get a complete map of the past. Jann Vendetti started the SLIME community science project (Snails and slugs Living in Metropolitan Environments) to better understand the health and distribution of our local snail and slug populations. Today we map current locations for shoulderband snails and other species so we can understand how these species have responded to urbanization, and track future changes.
These snails are hard to find. Look for them after rains in undisturbed areas, particularly in the coastal sage scrub and chaparral habitats. Remember this is a critically endangered species—carefully flip logs and rocks to spot them (be sure to put them back as they were). Follow slime trails and look at old shells. You’re most likely to find them on Trips 13 and 25.
Ambigolimax valentianus
Once confined to Spain and Portugal, the striped greenhouse slug can be found throughout Los Angeles, particularly if you’re out and about at night in irrigated areas.
In the early 1900s there were two publications that looked at the slugs of Los Angeles—the striped greenhouse slug was not mentioned in either, which means it likely had not yet been introduced. Somewhere between 1912 and 1940 the slug showed up, and now there are millions of them here.
Like all other land-dwelling slugs and snails, the striped greenhouse slug has a lung-like sac under its mantle. (The mantle is the fleshy lobe behind the head.) To breathe, it just has to tighten the mantle to move air inside its body. Look closely and you can usually see the breathing pore, known as a pneumostome, slowly opening and closing.
Living on dry land is hard for snails and slugs; they have to make sure they don’t dry out. One way they conserve water is with an alternative to liquid urine, excreting instead hard crystals made of uric acid. Many birds and reptiles that live in hot, dry climates use this strategy too.
Some people refer to slugs as “snails that have lost their shells.” While it’s impossible for an individual snail to lose its shell, since body and shell are attached, you could say that slugs have lost their shells over time through evolution. The striped greenhouse slug still has a small, plate-like, internal shell.
These slugs are easy to find. They’re gregarious, so look for groups of them in damp, irrigated yards, parks, and greenhouses. Follow slime trails and you could find a compost bin full of them. You’re most likely to find them hiding during the day, or out and about at night, on Trips 7 and 12.
Trametes versicolor
On rotting logs in our local mountains or sprouting out of old tree stumps on university campuses, the beautiful, leathery turkey tail fungus can be found year round. Its alternating bands of color (from yellow, red, brown, gray, or black) and texture (velvety or smooth) and its turkey-tail shape make it easy to spot. However, there are many lookalike fungi, including the aptly named false turkey tail, and often it takes experts to tell them apart.
Turkey tail fungus is a type of saprobe fungi, which means it eats wood—usually decomposing deciduous trees, but sometimes conifers too. When food is abundant, the fungus is mostly hidden, living inside and feeding on the decaying wood. If you were to open up a stump or log, you’d see a network of white strands, or mycelia, which are fungal cells that grow into long threads. When the fungus is ready to find a new place to live, or if food runs out, the mycelia grow a spore-bearing, fruiting body—a mushroom. In this species, the mushroom is the fan-shaped shelf sticking out from the log or stump. Sometimes there can be dozens in highly photogenic arrangements.
Most mushrooms disappear after a few hours or days, but turkey tail mushrooms are made of sturdier stuff and can be found in the same spot year after year. Find one in your neighborhood or along your favorite trail and watch it grow and change colors over seasons and years.
When the turkey tail fungus is ready to reproduce, it develops whitish-yellow spores, which it releases by the billions through tiny pores. If the spores land in a favorable spot, they will germinate, find food, and grow.
Look for turkey tail fungus shelves growing out of dead and decaying tree stumps, downed wood, and rotting fence posts or decking. Most likely to be found on Trips 1, 4, 8, 14, and 15.
Agaricus xanthodermus
Popping up on dew-wet lawns across the city, or on irrigated golf courses in Griffith Park, this white mushroom looks an awful lot like Agaricus bisporus, a mushroom you’d add to your breakfast omelet. However, the yellow-staining mushroom can cause severe stomach cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea. Don’t eat mushrooms you find growing in your lawn!
Los Angeles lawns host a handful of white mushroom species. Though some are edible, you should never eat a wild mushroom unless you’re a skilled mushroom hunter. The easiest way to identify this little white mushroom is to bruise it then smell it. It will turn yellow and smell like ink or iodine.
Yellow-staining mushrooms can often be found growing in arcs, or perfect circles on lawns. These phenomena are called fairy rings in the belief that fairies danced on the spot overnight. However, there’s nothing supernatural about a fairy ring’s origin. The center of the ring is where a germinating spore has landed, producing strands of fungal cells that grow outward in all directions. As the fungus spreads, it feeds on organic matter in the soil, eventually, sending up a cluster of mushrooms in a tell-tale circle.
Avid mycologists, the professional term for mushroom experts, have a good trick to help them identify mushrooms—they make spore prints. These help determine the color of a mushroom’s spores and are a fun activity for nature-lovers of all ages. (As always don’t disturb mushrooms or any other species in protected areas.)
First, take the cap off a mushroom, then place it on a piece of black or white paper for a few hours—the spores will land on the paper and be easy to see. Spores come in many colors, from black, brown, white, and even green! If you’re not sure what color spores your mushroom will have, try putting one on black paper and one on white. The yellow-staining mushroom has a dark, chocolate-brown spore print.
Look for yellow-staining mushrooms on irrigated lawns of parks, golf courses, and cemeteries. Most likely on Trips 18, 21, and 24.
Fuligo septica
That odd yellow or pink fluffy mass sitting in mulch-filled planters and garden beds is dog vomit slime mold. Sometimes mistaken for a fungus, this organism is actually a plasmodial slime mold. Most of the time it lives as a single cell amongst dead wood and mulch. It feeds by engulfing its food—living bacteria and mushroom spores. When it runs out of things to eat, or conditions are otherwise not great for survival, the individual cells come together and fuse into one large mass called a plasmodium. This is the life stage we see and mistake for a dog’s regurgitated dinner. Eventually the mass takes on a sponge-like structure as it forms spores that spread into the environment.
Spores are like plant seeds—filled with enough genetic material to grow a whole new slime mold. Dog vomit slime mold spores are purplish-brown to black—when they’re released, the whole plasmodium turns dark. The tiny spores float through the air, landing on new territory and starting the cycle again.
Scientists have studied the movements of slime mold masses and even had them solve puzzles in experiments. They put the slime mold in a maze with a food source and over time it solves the puzzle to find the food. A dog vomit slime mass can move up to three feet overnight!
Look for dog vomit slime mold in gardens or planters that use woody mulch, particularly after rains or excessive watering. Most likely to be found on Trips 7 and 12 after repeated rain events.
Ramalina menziesii
Hanging from branches of oaks growing on bluffs and canyons above the Pacific Ocean, a light green, netted plant-like structure wafts in the breeze. As finely constructed as handmade lace, this organism isn’t a plant, it’s a lace lichen. Lichens are composite organisms, made up of two or three distinct life forms.
Lichens are complicated! Some mistakenly think of them as plants, even giving a few species names from the plant kingdom, like reindeer moss or Spanish moss. But they have no roots as most plants do and reproduce by spores instead of seeds. Lichens are unique because they are a combination of three living organisms—two species of fungi plus an algae or cyanobacteria (a group of bacteria that get their nutrients through photosynthesis like plants do). The fungi are the dominant partners, giving the lichen most of its characteristics and an ability to absorb inorganic nutrients. The algae or cyanobacteria allow the lichen to do what no fungus can—make food out of the sun.
It was thought that both parties mutually benefit from this association, but recent research found this isn’t always so. In some instances, the algae is “captured” by a fungus and doesn’t benefit, which makes the fungi a parasite.
In certain areas along our California coast, trees hang heavy with curtains of this Spanish moss look-alike. Animals, including deer and rabbits, like to eat it, and birds use it to line their nests.
California is the first state in the nation to designate a state lichen—it took seven years for the lace lichen to gain this status, and on January 1, 2016, the California Lichen Society celebrated its long-fought effort. Though California has 1,500 species of lichen, members chose lace lichen for a number of reasons: it’s easy to recognize, it’s common throughout much of coastal California, and it’s one of the most unique and beautiful lichens in the world.
Lichens are able to withstand some pretty extreme conditions. When it gets too hot, too cold, or too dry, they can shut down their metabolism and enter a state of inactivity, sort of like a bear hibernating through the winter. As soon as favorable conditions return they wake back up again. This lets them survive a long time—some lichens in the Arctic are thought to be 8,600 years old. While they’re able to stand environmental extremes, they don’t usually do well with pollution. That’s one reason lichen diversity is pretty low in urban settings. Because lace lichens have so much surface area, they are particularly prone to airborne pollutants. Scientists have begun using them to monitor air quality.
Lace lichens can be found along the coast and up to 130 miles inland. Look in areas where oaks grow on the Channel Islands or in the canyons of the western Santa Monica Mountains.
Arundo donax
Tall and green and vaguely tropical looking, arundo grows along the LA River in Frogtown. Some people think it looks like sugarcane, others like bamboo. Goats can eat arundo, but because the leaves contain concentrated salt, silica, and other noxious chemicals, not much else can. Once arundo enters a stream, it rapidly takes over and changes the streamside ecosystem.
Arundo flowers are large, silver to brown or purple, feathery plumes up to two feet long, which produce lots of small and sterile seeds. The seeds don’t spread it—instead it relies on underground rhizomes to reproduce. They break off during floods, and after washing up against a bridge or sandbank, they establish a new colony downstream. These sections can sprout even after months of drying in the sun—just add water and some soil that’s been torn up by a storm or bulldozer.
Arundo is apparently native to eastern Asia, although it has been moved around by people for so long its exact native range isn’t precisely known. In California, arundo dates back to the early days of the Los Angeles Pueblo. Back then, it was used to thatch roofs and woven into mats and screens. Later, it was intentionally planted to help control erosion in drainage ditches. Now it sprouts up along the LA River and other local riparian zones, wild and difficult to manage.
Arundo grows in dense mats, crowding out native streamside plants, and starving animals of food and shelter. Its seeds are too small for birds to eat, and most native wildlife shuns arundo as nest material. The situation gets worse when water is low and stalks are dry. Arundo is a fire-adapted species that burns easily, and its roots are anchored in wet soil so can re-sprout once conditions improve. Native willows, cattails, and adjacent stream species aren’t adapted to fire and don’t fare so well. For all these reasons, arundo makes the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list of “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Species.”
Biologists and land managers responsible for restoring stream habitats would like to get rid of arundo completely—they spend a lot of time and money dealing with it. But homeowners still plant it as a windbreak, and, because it grows so quickly, some people want to use it as a biofuel. Arundo will likely be with us for a long time to come.
Moist areas and streambeds with soil; water must be nearby, even if from an underground spring or yard runoff. Trips 10 and 19.
Eucalyptus globulus
Blue gum eucalyptus trees are tall, graceful, and as popular with wintering warblers, who gobble insects off infested leaves, as they are with herons, who nest in them at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve and Silver Lake Reservoir. They’re the most common big tree you’ll see along the freeway from San Diego to San Francisco.
Blue gum eucalyptus leaves shimmer in summer sunlight and their subtle pastel bark brings on the urge to paint watercolor. Or—and this view is held by many foresters and botanists—they’re weedy pests that make bad wildfires worse and outcompete California native plants for water, nutrients, and sunlight—a devil plant whose arrival ruined Southern California landscapes. In the blended ecology of modern California, we need to navigate between both views.
Blue gum trees were imported to Los Angeles in the 1870s as timber trees. But it turns out their wood cracks and twists as it dries and isn’t a good timber crop. They next became popular as windbreaks at citrus farms—though they’re not always effective there either.
Memories are short, so eventually people started planting these trees again. Abbot Kinney, best known as the architect who developed Venice, was chair of the California Board of Forestry and interested in finding ways to prevent floods and erosion caused by ranching. In the 1890s, he promoted the blue gum heavily, pitching it as a miracle plant that could help everybody get rich. The fad lasted into the early 1900s when the bottom fell out of the eucalyptus market yet again, but by then the tree was firmly established in the area.
There are many species of eucalyptus and not every species is as invasive in California as the blue gum. Eucalyptus leaves contain a lot of oils. You’re likely familiar with them—they’re often used in cough drops and syrups. These oils are highly flammable, creating a fire hazard as leaves and shreds of bark accumulate under the trees. In Australia, native fungi break down this debris, but since the fungi aren’t found in California, the oil-rich leaves stay on the ground until a cigarette butt or lightning strike turns the eucalyptus grove into a firestorm.
Burning eucalyptus trees can be explosive, sending sparks or flaming debris far ahead of the main fire, helping it spread. Eucalyptus have a life cycle that depends on fire for survival. The trunks can regenerate even if some branches have burned off, and the hard, triangular seedpods (called pips) open up after a fire, releasing seeds from their protective casing to take advantage of the freshly cleared landscape.
Most people in Los Angeles live within walking distance of a eucalyptus tree, but among the places where you can see large blue gums, Trips 2, 8, 12, and 24 all have eucalyptus trees of particularly robust size. You can see the groves first planted by Abbot Kinney at his Santa Monica Mountains forestry station on Trip 4.
Encelia californica
A big patch of this native sunflower can look like an exploded daisy factory. It brightens even the most drizzly June gloom, and when the sun comes out it’s even better, with saturated yellow flowers that burst exuberantly from vibrant green leaves. You may want to pick a bouquet for someone special—but don’t! Leave the blossoms, full of nectar and pollen, for the many insects that rely on them for food.
This member of the daisy family is a Southern California local. It can only be found along the coast and mountains from about Santa Barbara County to Baja California. One of the more common species in coastal sage communities, it is, for much of the year, one of the showiest plants on local hillsides.
After winter rains, the bush sunflower’s first flowers attract insect pollinators ranging from honey bees to flies, butterflies, and beetles. Small insects attract larger ones, including ladybugs that feast on aphids. Lesser goldfinches land in summer and fall to eat the seeds, and some butterflies eat the leaves. The dense, shady leaves also provide important cover for lizards, snakes, chipmunks, and ground-feeding birds like towhees. Certain beetle species spend their entire adult lives in this bush. It’s a miniature nature city in one compact, attractive plant.
The bush sunflower is one of the most popular plants for Southern California native plant gardens. With modest mid-summer watering, it can produce blooms deep into summer, and if it starts to get too bushy, it’s easy to trim back. Be sure to leave a few flowers long enough for seeds to ripen and ensure you a new crop of seedlings next year. Your neighbors will thank you for brightening up the neighborhood, and your local bee population will thank you for all the pollen.
A number of hikes and coastal areas feature this plant (including Trips 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, and 20), but the most reliable is Trip 15, Eaton Canyon, where it can be prolific around the visitor center and trailhead.
Eriogonum fasciculatum
This small, low shrub is butterfly heaven when in flower, can bloom for half the year, and is also drought- and frost-resistant. Its leaves are small and needle-like, which helps it conserve water. In midwinter, with most of the flowers gone, this plant looks like a rosemary or a super-scaled-down bonsai pine. By early spring, the whole plant becomes lollipopped with clusters of small yet perfect flowers. These flower clusters can serve as an informal calendar. They start out pale pink in spring, slowly change to creamy white by mid-summer, and in the fall, dry into a deep rust-red.
For a small plant with small leaves, the California buckwheat provides a huge benefit to the entire food chain. Although hummingbirds are too big to visit, most nectar-feeding insects queue up for a sugar rush. Besides the expected honey bees (buckwheat honey has a rich, musky taste—the merlot of the honey world), many butterflies use this plant, including metalmarks, hairstreaks, and several blues. Other members of the buckwheat fan club include wasps, bees, flower flies, and tachinid flies. Stand and watch a blooming buckwheat—it’s hard not to be amazed by the incredible insect diversity.
California buckwheat has evolved to endure our boom and bust rain cycles. It can thrive in years of more-than-usual rains (and in over-watered gardens as long as the soil drains well), but also knows how to tough it out in the dry years that inevitably follow. It has a two-tier root system—a deep central taproot keeps it anchored on steep hillsides and goes down deep for the best chance of finding long-term water, while a skirt of shallower, more surface-connected roots captures rain as soon as it falls.
Another reason California buckwheat does so well here, is it can grow in a number of plant communities. It loves our mosaic of habitats, including coastal sage scrub, sand dunes, grasslands, and hillside chaparral. It can be found from sea level up into the pine belt of Angeles Crest and out into the Mojave Desert.
Each California buckwheat flower by itself is truly dinky (smaller around than a pencil eraser), and the entire cluster is about the size of a walnut. Yet clusters cover the plant so thickly it seems to burst with a thousand cotton balls.
Trips 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 20, and 25 all feature California buckwheat and other native plants. You can find additional species of buckwheat in the Museum’s Nature Gardens (Trip 7), including several that, outside of cultivation, are known only from the Channel Islands.
Eschscholzia californica
California is the “Golden State” not just because of the Gold Rush of 1849, but also because of our iconic state flower. In the days of sailing ships, Spanish sailors could see golden, poppy-covered hillsides from far out at sea. These days, a late spring drive over Tehachapi Pass can reveal spectacular displays high above Interstate 5.
In some years California poppies bloom as early as March, but usually they come later and linger all the way through June. Once a plant is done blooming, the fallen petals cover the ground like small orange handkerchiefs.
The blooms of the California poppy are so intensely orange, on a sunny day it can feel like somebody has cranked nature up to its most vivid setting. The orange runs in both directions, with bright blooms above and a carrot-colored taproot below. This long, thin root allows the plant to find water deep in the soil so it can survive dry periods.
Poppy flowers are cup shaped, like a Dutch tulip or a small teacup. They’re pollinated mostly by beetles, and also by bees. Flower size varies by time of year; on average, later blossoms are smaller than earlier ones. California poppies don’t have nectar, so hummingbirds, butterflies, and other nectar seekers don’t come around. Instead, bees and other insects gather pollen.
In wet years, you can see California poppies at many of the sites featured in this book, especially at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve only a short drive away in Lancaster. Thanks to an increase in native landscape planting, you also might see California poppies along freeway margins. When not in bloom, they’re easy to overlook. Two places to start learning them—and places likely to have blooms even in lean years—are Arlington Garden (Trip 12) and the Museum’s Nature Gardens (Trip 7).
Artemisia californica
This plant has a lot to give. It’s a treat for the nose—even if you just brush past them while hiking, its leaves release that classic sage scent, cowboy cologne. Oils in the stems and leaves create the aroma, which also discourages animal and insect pests from having a nibble.
It’s also a visual treat—the soft, fine-textured leaves create a delicate, almost feathery look that changes halfway through the year. In the rainy season, California sagebrush produces larger, greener leaves, and in the summer, smaller, grayer ones. The second batch uses less water, helping sagebrush get through the dry season. When it gets too dry for even these leaves, the plant is drought-deciduous: its leaves die (they may or may not fall off) and a new set emerges in the next rainy season.
California sagebrush has an entire ecosystem named for it: the coastal sage scrub plant community. The most common community members are California sagebrush (of course), California buckwheat, ceanothus, manzanita, other types of sage, and sometimes cactus.
Bees and other insects visit sagebrush flowers for nectar and pollen, and, because California sagebrush often blooms late in the summer, it’s an important source of food. Birds use it for nesting; chipmunks and lizards use it for shade.
One bird in particular has its destiny tied to California sagebrush. The California gnatcatcher only nests in areas with dense sagebrush. This bird doesn’t migrate, living its entire life here in California and adjacent Baja California. There may be as few as 2,500 pairs of California gnatcatchers left, which is why preserves in places like the Palos Verdes Peninsula matter so very much.
California sagebrush is mostly a lowland species—you won’t find it in the high mountains. It occurs in the native plant garden at the La Brea Tar Pits, at the Museum’s Nature Gardens (Trip 7), and Point Vicente Park (Trip 25), as well as excursions 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9. It is widespread in natural areas.
What feeds deer, makes bees happy, turns entire hillsides white or blue, is seen by millions of people every day, and yet is invisible? The answer is a key genus that’s well represented in California wildlands: Ceanothus. There are more than forty ceanothus species in California, and all are generally called California lilacs. They grow near some of the busiest freeways in the world, yet most folks don’t know they’re there.
As with so many of our native plants, ceanothus may seem at first glance sort of dull and forgettable—just another drab, olive-colored bush. A closer look lets us enjoy its variety of forms, the subtle fragrance of its blossoms, and even the beauty of its braided stems. Our local ceanothus plants—the two most common of which are featured here—are found nowhere else in the world. Bigpod ceanothus is especially common at lower elevations of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains; it is replaced at higher elevations by hoary-leaved ceanothus.
Both are amazing organisms. They can survive droughts, grow back after fire, provide nectar to an impressive array of insects, and, without being asked, year after year put on a springtime flower display that rivals the best lilacs in a flower show.
Like all plants, ceanothus use the most basic ingredients—energy from the sun, carbon dioxide, and water—to make food. Through photosynthesis (the Latin roots mean putting together by using light) the plants create sugar and at the same time give off oxygen—thanks, plants!
But ceanothus also performs the remarkable chemical feat called nitrogen fixation. All plants need nitrogen, but it’s often hard to get. Ceanothus has a mutualistic partnership with bacteria that grow on its roots—it gives the bacteria food and shelter, and the bacteria help supply the plant with nitrogen by pulling it from the air and changing it into a form the plant can use. When ceanothus dies and decomposes, the nitrogen returns to the soil for other plants to enjoy.
Just as New England has fall foliage, California has spring days when entire hillsides glow blue and white with ceanothus blooms.
Most ceanothus plants bloom from early winter to early summer. Bigpod ceanothus starts its parade as early as December, but sometimes not until March, depending on when we get rain. You can see it all through the Santa Monica Mountains and up the coastal slope of the San Gabriels. Just as one plant finishes its display, another kicks into action, blooming in succession as you go toward the Angeles Crest. The show typically lasts well into June if the rains have been decent.
In drought years ceanothus may hunker down, shedding some leaves, maybe dropping a branch or two, but a particularly rainy winter will send them into an explosion of flowers. As the small fruits of the ceanothus dry out in summer, tension builds until the capsule explodes with a clear pop, flinging thousands of seeds in all directions.
A classic chaparral plant, ceanothus can be found on Trips 1, 8, 9, 15, and 16.
Hesperoyucca whipplei
You’ve probably seen this plant, or at least its flowers. This California native lives most of its life low to the ground, often hidden from view by other plants. But in spring, seemingly overnight, all the yuccas along the 210 Freeway bloom at once, sending up flagpole stalks topped by thousands of creamy white flowers. Each stalk points down to the circle of spikey, fibrous leaves at the base, as if to say, “Hey everybody, I’m here!”
If you’re trying to take a picture, be careful lining up the perfect shot. These plants often grow together, one every few feet, and the tips of their leaves are sharp and rigid—they’ve earned the name “Spanish bayonet,” with concentric rows of their sharp tips pointed outward, like an aloe vera plant crossed with a porcupine. Back into one, and you’ll be sorry.
Yet from a safe distance, a hillside of chaparral yucca in bloom is a tremendous sight. Another common name for this plant, “our Lord’s candle,” is a good description of the flower stalk, which looks like a torch or flame being carried in a holy procession.
Chaparral yucca offers a classic example of mutualism. Every chaparral yucca is pollinated by just one species, the California yucca moth. The moth lays her eggs inside a flower so the young can feed on the seeds. The pollen inside yucca flowers is stickier and stringier than in most plants, so most insects avoid it the same way you avoid gum on the sidewalk. But the yucca moth can handle this stringy material, so it goes from plant to plant, gathering pollen and laying eggs. It only lays eggs on chaparral yucca—nothing else will do—and the yucca relies solely on this moth to pollinate its flowers. Each depends entirely on the other.
When they finish eating some of the seeds, the caterpillars drop to the ground, pupate (change from larva into adult moths), and fly off to find more blooming yucca plants and continue the cycle.
This is a classic case of “you never see just one.” In a bloom year, it seems like all the chaparral yuccas know to bloom at once, each exploding its single stalk into the sky. Each plants will do this just once in its lifetime, and since they want to be sure they have a good chance for pollination, practically all the yuccas bloom around the same time, offering up a huge feast for the moths. Scientists aren’t entirely sure how they do this. It could have to do with the timing of rains, or of fires, but the exact trigger that gets so many plants blooming at once remains a mystery.
Few native plants are as utilitarian as chaparral yucca. Native people use the fiber for baskets, ropes, brooms and brushes, and fishing nets; they use its charcoal for tattoos and dead stalks as tinder. It’s edible as well—you can roast the stalks, use it to make flour and seedcakes, or boil and eat the flowers. Animals share our interest. Carpenter bees make nest chambers in the stalks, while yucca longhorn beetles and black yucca weevils tunnel into (and help to decompose) dying plants.
Trips 2, 13, 14, 15, and 16 are the best.
Bromus species
Fringing every freeway onramp and carpeting every hillside, a silent killer hides in plain sight. Deceptively emerald after a good rain and brittle tan the rest of the year, cheatgrass is one of the worst pests in the American West. Los Angeles has cheatgrass plus several look-alikes, including a species with slightly longer heads (called the awns) with the horror film name of “ripgut brome.” Another, which turns pinkish when it dries out, is called red brome.
You’ve encountered these plants. If you’ve ever taken a shortcut through a vacant lot, the golden seed heads stuck in your socks or in the fur and ears of your dog are theirs. The smoke from a new brushfire on the local news probably isn’t coming from smoldering native plants but from these grasses—the first to die in summer and also the first to burn.
Cheatgrass is so good at burning, and so good at coming back first after a fire, it’s changing the fire ecology of entire ecosystems. Plant communities that used to have big fires every twenty, thirty, even fifty years, now have fires every five. That’s too quick for native plants to recover, and it creates an endless cycle of grow and burn, grow and burn. With a few exceptions, almost every brushfire in Southern California starts with tinder-dry, invasive grasses catching fire and spreading across a hillside or freeway edge.
Here’s how grass in Los Angeles is supposed to work: native perennial bunchgrasses grow in clumps with bare ground in between that reduces the risk of fire spreading. Their deep root systems hold moisture into mid- and late summer, making them fire resistant and good food for deer and antelope. Plus they’re tall, providing shade and shelter for little critters.
When plants like cheatgrass or red brome move in, everything changes. First, cheatgrass hogs water and nutrients in the soil, making it hard for native bunchgrasses and other plants to get started. Then it sends out so many seeds it overruns native plants to form a continuous flammable mass. When animals need food or shelter in summer, very little is left because the cheatgrass has already died. Studies have shown it even raises temperatures in its immediate area, making baked soil harder and hotter.
Land managers have experimented with using sheep and goats to graze cheatgrass to the ground early in spring, reducing the potential summer fuel load and catching it before it flowers and produces seeds.
More promising is a type of fungus jokingly called the black fingers of death. It doesn’t damage native plants but attacks cheatgrass seeds in the soil before they can sprout. Testing is going on now, and perhaps someday it could be applied across much of the western United States.
Start with the nearest vacant lot, but if that doesn’t work, Baldwin Hills (Trip 6), Debs Park (Trip 11), the trailhead of Icehouse Canyon (Trip 17), Powder Canyon in the Puente Hills (Trip 20), and the roadsides of Point Vicente (Trip 25) all have an abundance of bromes and cheatgrass.
Quercus agrifolia
Coast live oaks are abuzz with life. Thousands of species of insects, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fungi make a living in and around these trees. Some are attracted by the shelter of the tree canopy, others by the rich, organic leaf litter beneath, and still more by the tasty acorns that grow through summer and drop in fall. All the Native American tribes of the LA area used (and many still use today) acorns as food. Deer and black bears graze on acorns in fall to get ready for winter, and acorn woodpeckers stash many thousands of nuts for the year ahead.
A classic, mature coast live oak has a dense, dark green crown covering the tree almost all the way to the ground. Up close, its leaves are surprisingly small and tough, usually not even as long as your thumb. The topmost leaves are thick and small, with more layers of cells devoted to photosynthesis. These leaves are packed so tight they create a solid umbrella, soaking up maximum sunlight but also cooling the tree’s interior. Leaves on shady interior branches are thinner, wider, and flatter, with just one layer of photosynthetic cells. They capture stray light that filters through the crown and don’t need to be as armored as their upstairs neighbors.
Over two hundred species of wasps make galls in the twenty different oak species of California. Mama wasp needs a place to leave her eggs, one protected from harm but with a good, close-at-hand food source. Solution? Oak twigs and leaves. She lays her egg inside the wood or leaf along with chemicals that cause the tree to grow new tissue over and around the wound. Inside this swollen shelter, the larva develop with plenty of plant tissue for food.
Though appearances and locations vary, a typical oak gall looks like a wooden ping pong ball or small apple placed mid-twig (they’re often called oak apples). You can spot them near the thin ends of branches or scattered on the ground. For leaf galls, look for round or star-like growths on the underside of oak leaves. The gall’s shape can help identify the wasp species.
Some predators and parasites have figured out the galls’ secret. Competing wasp species and small birds like titmice search out active galls, so not all gall dwellers make it to adulthood. But it works out often enough that galls appear frequently on oaks—you can find them yourself with minimal searching.
Some wasps enlist oak trees in a clever gall defense. In a chemical interaction that’s not fully understood, the wasp larva inside the galls trick the tree into creating a sugary honeydew just outside. Ants love this and will defend their sugar factory against all attackers, keeping the wasps inside safe.
Hahamongna has great examples of coast live oak right in the parking lot (Trip 14); these trees are also found on Trips 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, and in many other foothill parks and preserves.
Baccharis pilularis
This large, bright green shrub is one of the most common native plants of the California landscape. Built for surviving drought, this waxy-leaved bush has a central root that drills straight down for ten feet or more, searching for water and anchoring the plant against intense winter rains. Usually it is a tall shrub, but on coastal bluffs, strong, cool winds create dense bonsai forms—still the same plant, just hunkered down against the elements.
Plants use a variety of strategies to keep animals from eating them. Coyote brush produces oil on its leaves that makes them taste bad to deer and other grazers. On hot days, the oil evaporates with a rich, incense-like smell. This evaporation helps the plant stay cool the same way sweat cools you off after a workout.
Coyote brush has separate male and female plants, as you can see in the fall when the flowers bloom. Flowers are very small (about the size of a pea) and cover the bush all over, looking something like dirty snow. Male flowers are yellow and cream colored. Female flowers are white. In the fall, female flowers will have long hairs that help their tiny, black seeds float on the wind like small soap bubbles. When not in bloom, males and females look the same.
Coyote brush is widespread in our coastal scrub and chaparral plant communities and can be found on Trips 1, 3, 8, and 25. Once you learn what it looks and smells like, you’ll notice it on many hikes.
Ceiba speciosa
Despite stereotypes that declare Los Angeles a concrete jungle, trees like this, with their showy, orchid-pink blossoms and green, spine-covered bark prove the city has surprising nature. Many plants can grow in our mild Mediterranean climate, and this tree is an example of past Angelenos trying to bring something unusual into their backyards.
In their native range, floss silk trees are found in northern Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. Much of this range overlaps with that of the yellow-chevroned parakeet, which loves to tear into the seedpods in search of large black seeds. Now that both species have been introduced to the area, you can observe this South American dynamic along the sidewalks of Los Angeles. But here, eastern fox squirrels compete with parakeets for those tasty seeds.
The immense seedpods—twice the size of our supermarket avocados (watch out below when they fall!)—burst open to reveal silky white “floss” that bushtits and hummingbirds use to line their nests. The soft filaments help the large seeds float on the wind, carrying them far away so the tree doesn’t compete with (and shade out) its offspring.
Bees like floss silk blooms, as do hummingbirds and sometimes other nectar-attracted birds like tanagers and orioles. In the fall, after the flowers have been pollinated, the tree drops its pink crown creating a carpet of blooms. They look beautiful, but walkers beware—they’re incredibly slippery on sidewalks!
The floss silk trunk is covered with triangular prickles or spikes—watch where you lean—and it often swells towards the bottom of the trunk, like a bowling pin. Under the thorns the trunk is smooth and light green, especially when the tree is young (later the bark becomes grayer and more wrinkled). The color comes from chlorophyll, the pigment that makes plants green and aids in photosynthesis. That means even when the tree has dropped its leaves for the year (as it often does before blooming), the trunk can help turn sunlight into food.
Listen for the yellow-chevroned parakeets screeching as they zoom past overhead—they will take you to the nearest floss silk trees. You can find some near the Museum’s Nature Gardens (Trip 7) and as a street tree all around Los Angeles.
Parakeets love floss silk seedpods here in Los Angeles just as much as in their native South America.
Arctostaphylos species
Manzanita is Spanish for little apple, but this evergreen chaparral shrub is usually identified by its smooth maroon-red bark. The branches often rise up out of a central trunk like modern sculpture; the tallest ones are themselves the size of a small tree. Most manzanitas have leathery, smooth, medium-to-pale green or gray leaves that vary in size and shape depending on species. In all types, the leaves are very flat, and usually held vertically to minimize the amount of surface area exposed to the sun.
Manzanitas are great friends of wildlife. When in bloom, fragrant, bell-shaped, white to pale pink flowers attract crowds of hummingbirds and insects.
Even more noticeable than its bee-filled bouquet is the manzanita berry crop. Once the small reddish-brown fruits are ripe, lots of animals want in—bears, foxes, coyotes, squirrels, and quail. Even if you don’t see the critters themselves, the seeds filling their scat will tell you who’s been feasting on berries. In the past, California’s grizzly bears gorged on manzanita berries for hours, hence the name bearberry. Native Americans dry the berries to store for winter, making a kind of fruit punch from them, using them in jelly, or eating them fresh. The leaves and bark can be used to make teas as a treatment for upset stomach.
Manzanitas are long-lived shrubs. Our local species are large bushes or smallish trees. In other parts of California, you can find mountain or coastal species that grow very low to the ground. Regardless of size and form, all manzanitas share gorgeous bark, with swirls of red and gray wrapping around like an exotic barber pole. Sometimes the red bark peels off in long curls. This allows for expanding growth and signals the end of the winter growing season and onset of summer dormancy.
Manzanita plants use two strategies for making sure they persist after a fire. Some species can resprout from their base—the fire burns the above-ground parts of the plant and triggers the burl at or below ground level to sprout. Others rely on spreading their seeds widely. Even if the original plant dies, the heat of the fire causes seeds buried in the soil to sprout while there’s little competition for space. A few burl sprouters are believed to be over one thousand years old, but on average, most manzanitas live less than fifty years.
California is the world headquarters for this group, with five species occurring in LA County and over fifty statewide. This is an easy plant to locate in Angeles Crest. Try Trip 16.
Washingtonia robusta
Convertible sports cars, a perfect sky, and rows of tall, stately, oh-so-thin palm trees: what could be more Hollywood than that? Except Hollywood’s palms aren’t native. The Mexican fan palm came to Southern California with the Spanish missions as a source of fronds for Holy Week celebrations. It also may have been planted to provide thatching for house roofs. Beautification projects in the 1930s planted huge numbers of palms along barren city streets, ensuring its status as an iconic symbol for Hollywood, Malibu, and living la vida buena. In some areas they can form dense monocultures. Because of their tendency to crowd out other species in areas near water, Mexican fan palms are sometimes listed as an invasive species.
Los Angeles’s other common palm is the only one native to our state—the California fan palm. It only occurs naturally in desert oases but was brought to the city where its massive trunks line streets in older neighborhoods and cemeteries. Like so many of us humans, the city’s palms originally came from somewhere else.
It may seem like there are several kinds of fan palm, since some have beards or petticoats of dead fronds hanging down and some are smooth and clean, right to the top. But the difference is only due to machetes and chainsaws.
In their untended state, fan palms have lots of dead fronds. However, these are highly flammable, provide habitat for unwanted rats to nest in, and are a falling hazard (particularly during windstorms), so most planted fan palms are trimmed by work crews. The picture postcard silhouette is a Tinseltown fabrication.
Another iconic LA palm tree is the Canary Island date palm. It’s easy to distinguish from the other two. On average, fan palms are taller and thinner, while date palm trunks tend to be chunky, like a temple column. Fan palm fronds are broad and shaped like an old-fashioned lady’s fan. Canary Island date palms belong to a group called the feather palms, and their fronds look like long, shaggy feathers—think Shakespeare’s quill pen. There are more kinds of palms than just these three, of course. Nobody’s quite sure how many of the world’s two thousand palm species have been planted in Los Angeles.
It’s hard not to see fan palms in the city. They’re planted along many streets, including Sunset and Hollywood boulevards and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. You can also see them along the LA River (Trip 10).
Schinus molle
This is probably Los Angeles’s first non-native tree, having come to California around 1825. The Peruvian pepper produces small, pink peppercorns, which Spanish padres dried and ground to zest up their meals. They planted pepper trees at the missions and the earliest haciendas and pueblos, partly for the peppercorns, partly for the shade provided by their aromatic leaves, and partly for the timber—their wood was favored for making saddles.
Birds like the peppercorns too, and they help the tree spread. They eat the fruit then poop out the seeds away from the parent tree—inadvertently planting them with a dab of starter fertilizer. Between the birds, missionaries, and early settlers, this tree has become so common across coastal regions of Central and Southern California that it’s often called the California pepper despite its ancestry.
Its soft, weeping-willow profile and common role as a street tree make it an iconic part of the LA botanical experience, joining the ranks of the Mexican fan palm and eucalyptus as being both widely planted and widely recognized. Even if you don’t know its name, you’ve almost certainly seen it.
Tolerant of drought, not fussy about soil types, and able to endure full sun or partial shade, this tree is well-suited to our climate. You can see it along freeway edges, in the courtyards of historic churches, or dotted across foothill canyons. But because it can take over hillsides and crowd out native plants, the California Invasive Plant Council lists it as an invasive species.
The peppercorns you grind onto your dinner usually come from the black pepper, which is native to India and grows as a large tropical vine. The Peruvian pepper is more closely related to dandelions, roses, and oak trees. However, if you have a colorful mix of peppercorns in your pepper grinder, the red and pink ones are from either a Brazilian or Peruvian pepper. These species are both in the cashew family—someone allergic to tree nuts might also have an allergy to pink peppercorns.
The largest tree at Arlington Garden (Trip 12) is an especially venerable pepper. Trips 2, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, and 20 also give you a chance to study, and smell, this aromatic species.
In the blended magic of LA botany, two pine trees from opposite sides of the world help fill out the local landscape. The most common pine in our neighborhood parks, college campuses, and median strips is the Canary Island pine, named for islands off the coast of Morocco. Native ponderosa is even bigger, taller, and more majestic, best appreciated in the Angeles Crest high country.
Both trees have reddish bark, classic pine cones, long, evergreen needles, and lots and lots of squirrels.
A mature pine tree is the ultimate survivor. Thick, fire resistant bark? Check. Leaves reduced to über-minimalist needles that are windproof, snow-proof, freeze-proof, and super drought-resistant? Check. Energy conservation, so that the same needles last for three or four years? Check. A pollination plan that doesn’t need any animal helpers—just the wind? Check and check.
Pine needles are so tough few things can eat them. And when they die and fall off, the needles release chemicals into the soil that help the parent tree by keeping other plants from growing around the base.
Even the roaring Santa Ana winds that send eucalyptus trees crashing down on cars and porches don’t usually harm pine trees. Their trunks are immensely strong, and their needles so thin and tough the wind slides right through without stopping. Pine trees aren’t indestructible however; they’re vulnerable to bark beetles, which can devastate pine groves.
Charlton Flats (Trip 16) is ponderosa central. Canary Island pines, very common on our streets, are also found in the parklands adjacent to Sepulveda Basin (Trip 2), around Exposition Park (Trip 7), Franklin Canyon (Trip 8), and in Bonelli Park (Trip 18).
Toxicodendron diversilobum
The genus name means poison tree, and that’s fairly accurate. Like its close relatives poison ivy and poison sumac, our poison oak contains an oil that gives most people an itchy, blistery rash. Some folks suffer more than others and reactions may change during a person’s lifetime. Firefighters who breathe in smoke from burning poison oak can have a painful reaction in their throat and lungs.
Nevertheless, this beautiful native plant is part of our natural environment, and luckily, once you learn how to spot it, it’s not hard to avoid. This rhyme helps: leaves of three, let it be!
Poison oak leaves are slightly lobed with rounded edges, often shiny, and come in groups of three. They also change with the seasons. In spring, leaves are greenest and shiniest. In summer, many are tinged with red, and in fall, it’s an explosion of red, yellow, and orange. If you’re hiking and see a plant starting to turn a mix of red and green, treat it with respect—it’s probably poison oak. Though some plants keep a few leaves year-round, most drop their leaves in late autumn. Watch out for this “naked” poison oak—you can still get a rash from the leafless stems.
Poison oak produces white flowers followed by white berries in summer and fall. Birds love these berries: one study identified over fifty species that feed on them and inadvertently help spread the seeds.
From the M*A*S*H site at Malibu Creek State Park (Trip 1) to the weedier parts of Whittier Narrows (Trip 19), poison oak is found in oak woodlands and coastal sage scrub. A good place to learn how to identify it is Eaton Canyon (Trip 15), where it is well-labeled on the trails around the Visitor Center.
Juglans californica
In the wild, black walnuts won’t look like the nuts we buy at Thanksgiving. The familiar shell is hidden inside another layer—one that’s thick, green, and furrowed. It looks more like a small, wrinkled lime than a walnut. Getting the nut out from the husk takes a bit of work. And once you reach the nut you may feel a bit cheated, because it’s much smaller than the hybrid varieties most of us are used to. Still, you can eat it, and what you don’t want, the jays and squirrels will be happy to consume. In the shade of walnut trees, you’ll find old shells split in half, evidence that some critter recently enjoyed a meal.
The Southern California black walnut lives here in our biodiversity hotspot and no place else on Earth. But it’s only found in the coastal mountains of the Ventura and LA areas. Around Los Angeles, the best remaining walnut woodlands are on the north slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains and in the San Jose (between West Covina and Pomona), Chino, and Puente Hills. Farther south, it becomes increasingly uncommon with only a small number of walnut stands at the southern limit of its range in San Diego County. And that’s it! This is a true Southern California specialist.
Although the Southern California walnut is often thought of as a stream species, because it prefers riparian habitat, it also does fine on steep, partially-shaded hillsides. It’s usually found in oak woodlands but occasionally creeps into chaparral and coastal sage scrub. Once upon a time, Benedict, Laurel, Coldwater, Topanga, Bronson, and all the LA canyons would have had walnuts. Some still do, and many more could in the future. If you’re thinking of changing your yard to include more native species, this is a good one to consider.
Southern California black walnuts acted as rootstock to help start the English walnut industry. Inserting the twig of an English walnut into a slit carved onto the stump of a California walnut produced a hybrid tree with superior fruit. This system is still used today.
Walnuts were (and are) a big business. The first commercial hybrid California-English walnut orchard was planted in San Diego in 1845 and today the industry has an annual production of just under a billion dollars. If you’ve mixed walnuts into your brownies, they probably grew in California, descended from trees cultivated in the Southland.
Oak woodlands, hillsides, and stream edges, including Trips 1 and 4. Some grow in Griffith Park (Trip 9), including in the Old LA Zoo, facing the small cages farthest from the parking lots. Powder Canyon in the Puente Hills (Trip 20), takes you into one of the largest remaining Southern California black walnut woodlands.
Heteromeles arbutifolia
Toyon, also called California holly or Christmas berry, has been the official native plant of the City of Los Angeles since 2012. It’s a tall bush or small tree with white flowers in summer, vivid red berries in winter, and perky, slightly serrated, two- to four-inch long evergreen leaves all year around. In early summer the showy flowers are magnets for insect pollinators, which help grow those bright red fruits. If you cut open a berry—technically known as a pome—the inside looks a lot like the core of an apple.
When learning plants, it’s often easier to study them in isolation. With one all by itself, you can focus on the new plant’s shape, color, and distinctive features. A good place to learn toyon is in the Museum’s Nature Gardens. The Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino also has a good selection of toyon in the entry plaza.
More often, nature is a crazy parade, with few things occurring in isolation. You’ll almost always find toyon mixing it up with other plants featured here (manzanita, ceanothus, chaparral yucca) and a number of other common sage scrub and chaparral species, like lemonade berry and laurel sumac.
Rustic Canyon (Trip 4), the Museum’s Nature Gardens (Trip 7), Mt. Hollywood (Trip 9), and Eaton Canyon (Trip 15) are some of the many hikes on which you will come across Christmas berry.
Platanus racemosa
Before eucalyptus were introduced, western sycamores were almost always the tallest trees in LA lowlands. They became what’s known as witness trees and were used as significant boundary markers. One called the Eagle Tree still stands in Compton today; it once marked the northern edge of Rancho San Pedro.
These leafy trees often bend and twist into curious shapes, and they like to be near water but not in it. With Los Angeles’s floodplain forests all but gone, we mostly encounter western sycamores as park trees, such as along Arroyo Seco in Highland Park or downslope from the Old Griffith Park Zoo. Their trunks are pastel blends of white, gray, even pale green or pink. The bark flakes off in thin, curled sections. Sycamore leaves are broad and hand-shaped, similar to maple leaves.
Their distinctive seedpods form chains of round pods, which dangle from the ends of branches, each tied to the pod above like linked plastic monkeys. These fruits, green in spring and brown in fall, are hard and walnut-sized and protect tiny, fuzzy seeds.
Western sycamores don’t make good timber—the wood corkscrews, breaks, and splits into odd chunks. The sycamores themselves even have a hard time with it. Their branches can crack off, leaving hollows and divots, some quite deep. These turn out to be perfect for wildlife. Owls, wood ducks, raccoons, and parrots all find them just right for making a den or nest.
Hand-shaped leaves are green in spring and summer, turning yellow or tan before dropping in fall and winter.
Especially when young, these trees need water, so if you see a western sycamore, there’s either a lot of underground water now, or there was once. Trips 1, 3, 4, 7, 15, and 19 all have sure bet western sycamores. If visiting the LA River at Frogtown (Trip 10), just upstream, the Bette Davis Picnic Area on Riverside Drive has many mature sycamores, most with leaning, curving trunks that beg to be climbed. (Careful though: some people are allergic to the hairs on the leaves.)
Salvia apiana
White sage has something for everyone. Gardeners appreciate the handsome shrub for its striking silver foliage, dramatic floral display, and bold scent. Bees like it (its scientific name, apiana, refers to the Latin word for bees, apium) and produce a delicate and flavorful honey from its flowers. Native Americans consider it sacred and essential for ceremonies. Other everyday uses include boiling the leaves for tea as a cold remedy, using it as a deodorant (a University of Arizona study demonstrated its antibacterial properties), or gathering seeds to eat whole or ground into pinole (a grain-rich) flour.
White sage has a strong aroma (some people love it, others compare it to dirty socks) and grows on steep hillsides, accepting drought and blistering sun. The silvery-white leaves reflect sunlight, which helps the plant conserve water.
Bundles of white sage leaves are sold as smudge sticks for burning—many believe the smoke will cleanse a space or heal a person. As this practice grows more popular, overharvesting wild plants is a serious concern, particularly for Native Peoples who hold it as sacred. Grow white sage in your garden instead of picking it (or buying it harvested) from the wild.
Today the most common visitors to white sage flowers in urban Los Angeles are European honey bees. But before they were introduced, native insects like bumblebees, moths, and flower flies did the job. These insects still visit today.
Carpenter bees, a species of very large native bee, seem too big to fit inside white sage flowers, but a recent study showed they can still get in by pushing the flower’s lower lip down, the way you use your foot to open the lid on a kitchen trashcan.
Look for white sage in coastal sage scrub and chaparral plant communities. This includes Trips 1, 9, 11, 14, 15, and 20, along with the various preserves of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, including Point Vicente (Trip 25). You can also find white sage in the Museum’s Nature Gardens (Trip 7) and outside the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum.
Marah macrocarpus
A green, sprawling vine with white, star-shaped flowers and a spikey, grenade-sized seedpod, the wild cucumber lives a Jekyll-and-Hyde life. Right after winter rains begin, it sends out long shoots that green up with four-inch leaves and tendrils, reminding some people of wild grapes. It flowers as early as January, and by the time the heat of mid-summer comes, the seedpods are dying dry husks.
The majority of the wild cucumber plant lives underground as a massive tuber that looks like a huge, ugly potato. The record-setter was 467 pounds, but even in less exceptional cases, these tubers can weigh 100 pounds. The stored energy in this modified root allows the plant to sprout vigorously after a fire. The green shoots sprawling over blackened earth or climbing burned tree trunks can be very striking.
Wild cucumber seedpods are remarkably fierce looking. When mature, they split open with a pop, scattering seeds for yards. The pod stays on the vine and dries out through fall and winter—tan, almost white, and bristling with dozens of thin, pale spines. It’s is filled with a loofah-like structure made up of tiny knitted threads. Over time, the spiked husk disintegrates, and cucumber loofahs litter the ground.
In spring, Trips 1 and 15 almost always have plenty of wild cucumber. Look for it as you hike along trails anywhere there’s a good mix of native vegetation, both along creeks and in drier, shrubby areas.
