3. Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve
6. Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area
7. Nature Gardens at the Natural History Museum
9. Mount Hollywood and Griffith Park
11. Ernest E. Debs Regional Park
13. Oro Vista Park and Tujunga Wash
18. Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park
19. Whittier Narrows Recreation Area
23. Lower LA River at Willow Street
24. Earvin “Magic” Johnson Park
Although nature is all around us at all times — sidewalk snails, lawn mushrooms, and light pole–perching birds included — there’s something fun about making a special trip to new or familiar places. Whether you’re looking for charismatic megafauna (like bighorn sheep or green sea turtles) or just want to check out a new-to-you nature spot, the following twenty-five trips will help you get to know Los Angeles’s nature firsthand.
Whether it’s a park you’ve been to a hundred times, or a spot you’ve never visited, the beauty of nature is that it’s always changing.
Packing for a nature adventure is part of the fun. What animals and plants do you expect to find, what tools will help you experience them better? How will you stay comfortable while out and about? Here are some essentials for your pack:
• Sunscreen, hat, water, snacks, additional clothing as needed for the weather (rain jacket, warm sweater, water shoes, etc.).
• Binoculars (great for birds, butterflies, and dragonflies). Pro tip: using only one eye, look through the wrong end of the binoculars and they become a makeshift magnifying lens.
• Hand lens or magnifier. Great for seeing insects and other tiny plants and critters up close. Pro tip: hold your magnifier in front of your smartphone’s camera lens and it will help you get the perfect picture of tiny things.
• Camera. Whether with your smartphone or other camera, pictures of what you find will not only help you keep memories, they can also become data points for community science projects. Share your finds with us by tagging #wildLA in your social media posts.
• Field guides like this one. Although they can be heavy, field guides help novice nature explorers identify what they find. Get familiar with your guide before you go—there’s nothing quite as frustrating as trying to flip to the right page as that really cool bird flies off into the distance.
• Maps are helpful for getting to your spot and navigating once you’re there. Pro tip: if you don’t have a paper map, snap a picture of maps displayed at the trailhead.
• Field journal/notebook. Some people like taking notes or drawing pictures of what they find. It could be a place to list all the different species you see that day, or somewhere to jot any strokes of genius you may have on the trail.
Wonderful weather and millions of Southern Californians means our trails get a lot of use. Try to pick up at least one piece of litter on every excursion (you may never look at helium balloons the same happy way again). You can be proud of yourself, and the next person down the path will appreciate your effort.
Keep music turned off. It could detract from someone else’s nature experience and might cause you to miss hearing a lizard scurry through the leaves or a bird celebrating spring or a rattlesnake politely telling you that you’re getting too close.
Famous as the M*A*S*H film site, this 8,000-acre park has fifty miles of trails that explore streams and valleys, oak forests, rocky cliffs, and a beautiful lake.
Few parks so perfectly combine great scenery with abundant wildlife. You can hike for an hour, a day, or a full week and not run out of paths to explore or streambeds to investigate. With oak forests, grassy hillsides, and a year-round lake, it’s no wonder this site is considered the crown jewel of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Even if you’ve never been here before, you’ve probably seen these rugged hills and open, sycamore-filled valleys in a movie or television show. The most popular hike goes two miles each way to visit the M*A*S*H set, used for filming both the 1970 movie and the subsequent television series. Starting from the main trailhead near the campground, you’ll be following the well-named Crags Road. Along the way you’ll pass the camera-ready sandstone bluffs of Goat Buttes and experience wild California at its best. Coast live oak, valley oak, scrub oak, sycamore, and Mexican elderberry trees create a plant community that provides shade for us and shelter and food for many animals.
Before Europeans arrived, this was all Chumash territory. The word “Malibu” comes from a Chumash word, humaliwo, which means “the surf sounds loudly.” Along the Malibu coast they hunted marine mammals, fished, and foraged for shellfish; inland they harvested acorns and a variety of wild berries and hunted rabbit and deer.
If you notice a large hawk turning in close circles on broad wings, it’s probably the red-tailed hawk. Acorn woodpeckers, yak-yak-yakking and swooping tree to tree, are also long-time residents.
If nanday parakeets are around, it’s not hard to find them—they’re even yakkier than acorn woodpeckers.
Nanday parakeets are more recent arrivals. Also called the nanday conure or black-headed parakeet, they are native to Brazil and Argentina, but escaped captivity to naturalize here. These foot-long birds are green with a black head and chin, red feathers on each leg, and blue-tipped wings. Look for them in sycamore trees with broken branches and hollow spots in the trunk, which they carve out with their sharp beaks to create nesting holes.
About halfway to the M*A*S*H site, a side trail leads to Century Lake. This human-made lake was created over one hundred years ago and on still days it reflects the surrounding cliffs like a mirror. Redwood trees, planted when the dam was built, still thrive here, offering a tiny glimpse into the ancient world, when saber-toothed cats roamed native redwood forests across Southern California. The top of the dam is off limits, but the lake is just a short detour from the main trail.
Staying on the main Crags Road trail takes you to the signpost and abandoned trucks that mark the M*A*S*H site. Just before you arrive at the site itself, the trail goes through a narrow, rocky section with a lot of dense, short trees. These arroyo willows help us know water is present just underground. Willows always mean there’s water nearby, even if you can’t see it or splash in it. Many of the streams in the park dry up by mid- to late-summer—to see the park at its wettest and lushest, visit in late winter or early spring. Most years, a few deeper sections of Malibu Creek and Las Virgenes Creek will keep water throughout the year. Look for non-native turtles and bullfrogs in these pools. This is also a good place to spot Pacific treefrogs.
Let kids be the leaders as you explore fun sandstone rock formations, oak trees, and historic trails at this ideal afternoon getaway.
At this end of the San Fernando Valley, you can walk through the history of Los Angeles. Rocks tell the first part of the story: the tan sandstone was laid down under the ocean over sixty million years ago, far to the south. Layers of silt accumulated thousands of feet underwater and, with heat, pressure, and time, became solid rock. Plate tectonics brought the rock north and to the surface through a combination of uplift and erosion. Stone quarried near here helped build Los Angeles. Chatsworth sandstone shows up everywhere, from churches in Pasadena to the breakwater at San Pedro.
Originally, these rocks were gray. A chemical change called oxidation (essentially, iron in the stone “rusting”) gave them their warm, orange color. A darker sheen shows up too. Called “desert varnish,” this layer of orange-yellow to black rock is formed from windborne particles—clay and other substances—that chemically bind to each other when it is particularly hot outside.
The stagecoach route to San Francisco from downtown Los Angeles passed near here and climbed up over Santa Susana Pass. Views enjoyed by stagecoach travelers also attracted movie and TV producers—many Westerns were filmed nearby in the 1940s and 50s.
During the Cold War, Nike missiles on the hills around Chatsworth protected Los Angeles from the threat of Russian bombers, and engineers from the nearby Rocketdyne Test Center developed rocket engines. At one time, low-power nuclear reactors were in operation here, contributing to an urban legend about local glow-in-the dark cats.
Plate tectonics brought these layers of sandstone, formed below an ancient sea, to the surface here, providing a perfect spot for people and wildlife to scramble about.
This park is named for oaks, but the tallest trees in it are these blue gum eucalyptus near the parking lot.
Your nature study can begin in the parking lot. The huge central tree is an oak, almost certainly several hundred years old, and the tall eucalyptus trees on the edge of the grassy play area are blue gums.
Listen for the yak-yak-yak of an acorn woodpecker and keep an eye out for flocks of blue scrub-jays making their rounds through the park. The smaller flitting songbirds might be lesser goldfinches—watch for a yellow tummy and black cap—or they may be yellow-rumped warblers, whose jaunty daub of yellow earns them the folk name “butter butts.” Both species sometimes drink at the dog bowls put out near the water fountains. The dinky, all-gray birds in chittering, fast-moving flocks are usually bushtits.
Tarantula hawks, those large, blue-black wasps with orange wings, sometimes show up near the parking lot too. They won’t bother you unless you bother them. Watching calmly presents little risk.
You may see red-tailed hawks working up the ridges or circling on rising columns of warm air (called thermals). They patrol the hills in search of food and nesting materials. Also riding the thermals are large, black, slightly less graceful birds that fly with a rocking motion on stiff, V-shaped wings—these are turkey vultures. They only eat dead food, called carrion, which they can find by sight but especially by smell—the “smell-o-vision” parts of their brains are particularly large. Sometimes they skim right over the trees with inches to spare, and if they’re low enough to the ground, you can make out their red, naked heads.
A turkey vulture waits for the morning air to warm, so it can ride the thermals and look for roadkill or other carrion.
As you gain a bit of altitude over the parking lot, look south, and you can see a large, fenced-off nature reserve, ending in a distant hill. That hill is the 1919 dam for Chatsworth Reservoir, once part of the water supply system of the LA Aqueduct but no longer in service because the dam doesn’t meet current earthquake standards.
At this park, it’s up to you to create your own route. The further you get from the road (and the earlier you’re out), the better your chance for spotting a shyer animal like a ground squirrel or a flock of quail. There are many short, kid-friendly options radiating out from the parking lot. Appoint a leader and let fate be your guide—most trails loop back to the main park sooner or later, and open views make it pretty hard to get turned around. When in doubt, just go back downhill, listening for the occasional passing car and taking the wider, more heavily used path at each junction.
Visit this hidden oasis to look for some of the reserve’s 267 species of birds and celebrate the “start” of the LA River.
Ospreys snatching carp, egrets nesting in trees, California towhees, and desert cottontails scurrying off early-morning paths—something always is going on here, especially in winter and especially before the glaring hot sun of a midsummer day.
To find the reserve, turn off Woodley Avenue and drive past the cricket fields to the last parking area you can find. Restrooms (and sometimes volunteers with loaner binoculars) are here, next to handsome, white-barked sycamores and lawns full of gopher mounds.
The trail around the main lake can’t be seen from the parking lot, but just head downhill away from the lawns. Once you reach the tall coyote brush (often frosted with pale flowers), the main loop trail will come into view.
Many of the birds in the species identification section of this book can be spotted by the lake. You may also discover a white pelican, a serene flotilla of Canada geese, or the submarining dive-and-surface of a pied-billed grebe. Hawks and turkey vultures circle overhead, and male red-winged blackbirds perch on lakeside bushes and cattails, loudly claiming their territory.
The male red-winged blackbird is glossy black with red-and-yellow wing patches, like decorative shoulder pads. Its liquid, oddly gurgling call is easy to identify. It usually gets typed out as konkk-luh-reeee—but it’s easier to hear than to transcribe. Any spring visit will teach it to you quickly. You can find blackbirds here year-round, even when they’re not yodeling.
The big, dark birds with long tails that look glued on sideways are great-tailed grackles. Itty-bitty bushtits chitter in nervous, always-on-the-go flocks, investigating bushes and the lower branches of trees. Mid-sized birds include towhees, sparrows, thrashers, and robins. As at most birdwatching sites, walking quietly and being out early usually brings best results. On weekends, you’ll see photographers out with their fanciest cameras and longest lenses, all waiting for that perfect shot.
Side trails west of the main lake will take you to Haskell Creek. Watch for belted kingfishers, non-native red-eared slider turtles, nesting mallards and wood ducks, and schools of non-native fish, mostly tilapia and mosquitofish.
Shamel ash trees, native to Mexico and now found all over Southern California, line the creek, mixing with native plants like mulefat, California walnut, elderberry, western ragwort, and mugwort. Of course, the usual non-native and invasive species can be found here too—castor bean, fennel, thistle, and mustard. Restoration efforts attempting to suppress introduced plants and replace them with native species make this area a perpetual work-in-progress, with lots of volunteer opportunities for anybody who wants to help.
The tall, more open canopy trees with solid, corrugated gray trunks and green, heart-shaped leaves are Fremont cottonwoods. Summer cottonwood leaves often flutter in the slightest wind, creating a mosaic of shimmering shade. In the fall, leaves turn yellow, red, and brown, while in winter the cottonwoods are bare, budding out again in February and March.
You’ll also find willow and eucalyptus trees here—botanically, this site is a good example of blended nature, with native and non-native species hashing it out, side by side.
The Sepulveda Basin is close to the start of the LA River (it technically begins where Calabasas and Bell Creeks join a bit farther upstream). Here at the Sepulveda Dam, more water is added from the Donald Tillman Reclamation Plant as it releases water into Haskell Creek.
What’s a reclamation plant? Wash your hands, run the dishwasher, or go to the bathroom, and that dirty water has to go somewhere. In a city like Los Angeles, this is a substantial amount of wastewater—hundreds of millions of gallons per day. In the San Fernando Valley, wastewater flows through an elaborate network of sewer pipes to Tillman—which trivia buffs will recognize as Starfleet Academy in Star Trek—where it is cleaned and released. Although the LA River’s water volume also includes natural spring water, rainfall, street runoff, and side tributaries, most of the flow in the dry season starts here at the Tillman plant.
One interesting man-made feature found on the lake’s loop trail is a stone monument as tall as a person. An inscription on the base explains, “At a two-year flood level, the water would be at your feet. At a twenty-year flood level, the water would be three times higher than this stone. At a fifty-year flood level, the water would be four times higher than this stone.”
In other words, if we want to keep having a city where we have a city now, we need dams like this one. It and Hansen Dam (further north by the 210 Freeway) are here not because there could be flooding, but because there was flooding. At the time of construction, the area was mostly ranches and orchards—since then the city has flowed up and around the dam all the way to Santa Clarita—a reverse flood of houses, roadways, businesses, and restaurants. Without controlling, delivering, and managing water, there could be no city here. You can get a good view of the dam from the 101 Freeway just west of the 405.
If you want longer walks than the bird stroll inside the main reserve, bridges cross Haskell Creek and trails zigzag west and north back out to Woodley Avenue (where you can park). At the bottom end of the lake there’s a path that parallels the 405, then enters a tunnel under Burbank Boulevard to access scrubby fields and a network of trails between the lake and the 101 Freeway. You’ll rejoin Haskell Creek on this side of the roadway and can follow it all the way to the LA River itself.
Hiking along an oak-shaded stream offers cool temperatures on hot days. Explore the remains of a creepy ranch from the 1930s, and spot interesting birds and plants year-round.
Rustic Canyon is home to the fabled ruins of Murphy Ranch, but even without these surreal and heavily-tagged structures, this hike to a cool, shady stream would still be a favorite among LA nature lovers. You start up high, on a fire road that offers views from the Pacific Ocean to the mountains, then traverse bands of native brush to drop down into the surprisingly cool and welcoming inner canyon. Water runs here even in summer, flowing out of springs higher up the canyon.
The stream-fed vegetation here is an example of riparian habitat—a fiesta of willow trees, sycamores, frogs, native flowers, and running water creates a plant community once found throughout the canyon bottoms of the LA foothills. Take a deep breath: the air smells wet, not quite a river and not quite a marsh, but a blend of both. Many riparian zones in the Southland have been turned into houses and streets—Rustic Canyon lets us experience California’s not-that-distant past.
To reach the canyon, park on the wide, well-tended streets of the Riviera neighborhood north of Sunset Boulevard. Walk west to pick up Sullivan Fire Road and follow that north along the top of the canyon. Trails drop into the canyon from this main fire road, with hundreds of concrete steps, seemingly going straight up and down.
Experienced hikers can come in from the bottom of the canyon, starting in Will Rogers State Historic Park and following the creek upstream from there. Expect wet feet and poison oak as the price of adventure.
Whatever your approach, you’ll end up at Murphy Ranch, about a third of the way between the beach and Mulholland Drive. In the shade of willows, oaks, and sycamores, the temperature will be twenty degrees cooler than on the sunny hillside. Think of it as nature’s air conditioning, making this excursion an especially good one for summer (still bring water, sunscreen, and a hat for the hot chaparral sections into and out of the canyon).
Poison oak is common in the cooler, shaded canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains. Stay on the trails to avoid it.
In the canyon bottom, at the top end of Murphy Ranch are redwood trees, considered non-native to this area. However, not that long ago, probably as recently as 15,000 years ago, during the time when the La Brea Tar Pits were trapping mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and dire wolves, redwoods were found farther south than they are today, including here in the coastal canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains. While 15,000 years may sound like a lot, this is only about eight redwood tree lifespans. In that relatively short time, the range of redwoods has retracted northward.
These Murphy Ranch trees, however, show us that conditions aren’t all that off for redwoods to survive in coastal Southern California. If the region received a bit more moisture, redwoods could make a comeback. Although Murphy Ranch has been unoccupied for decades, these trees are still able to get enough moisture to survive in this steep, shaded canyon. A handful of the trees died in the prolonged 2011–2016 drought, but some are still holding on, forcing us to ponder the definition of native. If they were here eight redwood generations ago, and are still found two hundred miles to the north, then what makes them non-native?
Some people call this trip the Nazi Ranch hike. That oversimplifies things a bit. Although rumors are as thick as June gloom fog, what seems to be true is that an eccentric couple, Norman and Winona Stevens, hired a series of top-shelf architects in the 1930s and 40s to draw up plans for a four-story mansion and related infrastructure. On paper it was a sort of “Hearst Castle South,” and may or may not have been affiliated with plans for a pro-Nazi utopian colony—some names have been removed from surviving documents and pseudonyms abound.
In the end, nothing large was ever built, though fuel tanks, workshops, and outbuildings survive. After World War II they were abandoned, and in time became colorfully painted and systematically vandalized. After the Fire Department had to rescue one person too many from unstable structures, the City of Los Angeles began boarding up some buildings and tearing down others. Don’t worry—if you like to photograph graffiti, plenty of painted walls remain.
Nature doesn’t need spray paint to be colorful, though. On this hike you might see a robin-sized bird sporting a chestnut vest under a jet-black topcoat, the spotted towhee. Males sing from exposed perches, but usually you’ll see one or two birds shuffling around in shaded leaf litter, hoping to uncover beetles and spiders. They also like poison oak berries. If a snake is in the area, towhees join the other understory birds to fuss and scold—what ornithologists call “mobbing.” They surround the predator and hiss their displeasure at the enemy in their midst.
Walking back to the car, look for the matilija poppy—large, floppy petals and a yellow center make it easy to spot. This is the largest flower of any California native plant; it was suggested for the state flower in 1890 but lost the vote to the orange poppy we know so well. Why limit ourselves to only one? Maybe California could have two or three or even ten state flowers—as this hike can show, we have many to choose from.
Arriving early (or staying late) makes it easier to discover nighttime residents like this curious brush mouse.
Follow Ballona Creek to the Pacific Ocean and explore fresh and saltwater wetlands. An observation platform in the saltwater marsh offers great birdwatching.
Whether you are a wetland lover or merely wetland-curious, Ballona will help you get your fill of this unique habitat. The wetlands in the Ballona area used to be extensive, covering almost two thousand acres—approximately half the area of Griffith Park. Most of that land is now developed, but thanks to the work of some dedicated individuals, including the Friends of Ballona Wetlands, six hundred acres of precious habitat (about 450 football fields’ worth) have been preserved as a state ecological reserve. There are saltwater and freshwater marshes, vernal pools, and even remnant coastal sand dunes. Much of the six hundred acres is off limits to visitors. It is one of the few remaining places in coastal Los Angeles where marsh birds (and hundreds of other species) can flock without being disrupted by humans. To get an idea of what much of Los Angeles used to look like, or to spy on the hidden lives of marsh-dwelling animals and plants, head down to this sliver of land between Marina del Rey and Playa Vista.
There are three areas to visit at Ballona—Discovery Park, the freshwater marsh, and the saltwater marsh. Both Discovery Park and the freshwater marsh are open daily for walking, bird watching, or just soaking in the view. The saltwater marsh is only open a few days each month when LA Audubon hosts their “Open Wetlands” days (info at losangelesaudubon.org) and the Friends of Ballona Wetlands lead marsh tours (info at ballonafriends.org).
Two hundred years ago, not long after the city was first settled, it was really hard to reach Ballona and the adjacent coastline. But as Los Angeles’s population grew and the Pacific Electric cable-rail lines were built, many more Angelenos were able get to the beach. The increase in beachgoers drove development. Restaurants, hotels, and other amenities were built over the wetlands. Thanks to the automobile boom, this trend continued. Today, the wetlands still feel the pressure of human expansion, but efforts by concerned community members, the staff and volunteers of local non-profit groups, and local government agencies help protect this precious habitat.
Imagine time-traveling to three hundred years ago and standing at what is now the intersection of Jefferson and Lincoln boulevards. You find yourself in the middle of a giant wetland that extends in all directions. There are marshes fed by saltwater from the ocean, and freshwater marshes filled by rain and by the countless creeks and streams that crisscross the landscape. The roar of traffic becomes the calls of thousands of birds, and car exhaust is replaced by a salty tang in the air.
The Ballona lagoon, a salt-water lake separated from the ocean by sand dunes, is close by. The place is alive with plants and animals, and there are humans too. The Gabrieleño/Tongva search for shellfish and other marine delicacies. In the distance you see smoke from a fire and the outline of many domed structures called kiiy. They’re built from the same reeds that line the water’s edge.
No Gabrieleño/Tongva villages remain today, but you can see a model kiiy at Discovery Park. To learn more about the Gabrieleño/Tongva people, visit the Kuruvungna Springs Cultural Center and Museum in the Sawtelle neighborhood.
The remaining wetlands are still home to many animals. Ballona is an important stop on the Pacific Flyway, so it’s no surprise that dedicated bird watchers have counted 320 species of birds in the area around Ballona (including both the salt- and freshwater wetlands, the bluffs, parks, and the adjacent residential neighborhoods). On any given day during spring or fall migrations, hundreds of birds can be seen by eye and through binoculars, including the phalarope, a slim-billed sandpiper that flies all the way to and from the Arctic.
Without these wetlands, migrating birds would have a near impossible time making their long journeys. They need wetlands like we need freeway rest stops, a place to relax and grab a bite to eat to fuel up for the journey ahead. But these marshes are for more than just the birds. They’re also fish nurseries, water and air filtration systems, places for groundwater to refill aquifers and buffer zones that help protect human homes and other property from floods.
A male bufflehead duck shows off its distinctive white and dark color pattern. These are most commonly observed in the lower reaches of Ballona Creek and at the freshwater marsh.
Rare in urban Los Angeles, the burrowing owl nests on the ground and even hunts in the middle of the day. Burrowing owls are reported from the Ballona Wetlands more than any other place in the LA area, usually from October through March.
Just down Jefferson towards the beach is the saltwater marsh. Although this part of the wetlands is only open to the public a few days each month, it’s well worth a visit. You can join a guided tour or explore the trails at your own pace.
A number of crisscross trails explore the marsh, but your best bet is to make a bee-line for the observation deck that sits almost in the middle of the salty habitat and is a great spot to look for marsh wildlife. Over 220 species of birds have been recorded in this location. There are common species like brown pelicans, mallard ducks, and California gulls, and many other shorebirds of the long-legged and long-billed variety.
Shorebirds, as their name implies, hang out along the edges of water. Their long legs and splayed feet allow them to walk through the mud without sinking or getting stuck. Tiny clams and crustaceans burrow and hide in the sticky-dark ooze, but shorebirds’ long bills allow them to dig deep and find their favorite snacks. Many shorebirds have bills equipped with extra sensitive tissue at the end, which allows them to know when they’ve found something worth eating.
Done with shorebird identification? The observation platform is also a great spot to look for an edible salt-loving plant—pickleweed, also known as Salicornia. Pickleweed is a halophyte, a plant adapted to high salt environments. It grows all along the banks of Ballona’s saltwater marsh and can be seen on menus or sold in grocery stores labeled as sea beans, sea asparagus, or glasswort. The small shoots are crunchy with a salty aftertaste. They’re best harvested in summer when they’re bright green. As autumn approaches the plants turn red and develop a tough inner core, which is much less appetizing. Harvesting pickleweed isn’t allowed in these protected wetlands, but you can try growing it in pots in your garden at home. Bon appétit!
Visiting in spring means you might miss some overwintering birds, but after heavy rains the wetlands have many other things to offer. Wildflowers sprout along the trails, snails come out from their hiding spots, and the vernal pool fills up. Vernal pools are seasonal wetlands that fill with spring rains and go dry during the summer. In Southern California, our vernal pools are dry more than they are wet. Still, after significant rains, they fill up and explode with life for a few weeks. As raindrops fall, the tiny fairy-shrimp slumbering in the earth sense it’s time for action. Hundreds of tiny eggs, pupa, seeds, and other suspended life-forms transform from their dormant state into their fast-paced pond lifestyle. Fish can’t usually access these pools, which allows these tiny creatures a chance to thrive without predators.
Any place with lots of sand and wind strong enough to move it will have coastal sand dunes. Once formed, dunes protect the area behind them from wind and waves and provide a place for plants to grow. Here at Ballona, expensive homes and beachfront property stand where most of the dunes used to be. The eight acres of remaining dunes are blanketed with ice plant, a fast-growing succulent that was initially introduced to keep the dunes from moving. Unfortunately, ice plant forms dense mats that outcompete native plants—now volunteers spend time removing it from the dunes and re-planting native species.
After walking all the trails around the saltwater marsh, you can extend your trip by heading down Ballona Creek to the beach. As you walk along the paved bike path, you might spot California sea lions in the creek. With each step toward the ocean, think about what this space looked like before all the houses, hotels, and shops were built and why it’s so vitally important to protect the few fragments of habitat that remain.
Enjoy some of the city’s most stunning views of the San Gabriel Mountains and downtown Los Angeles. Grassy banks for kids to roll down and hilly trails to climb.
On the border between Culver City and Los Angeles, Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area rises above the city and offers a bird’s-eye-view of Los Angeles. The park sits at the eastern end of the Baldwin Hills, a low mountain range which rises above the city between the communities of Baldwin Hills, Leimert Park, Inglewood, and Culver City. Thanks to oil, water, and steep slopes, these hills were saved from the creep of tract-home developments. Today, the park welcomes people from all over Los Angeles to hike the seven miles of trails, fish in the lake, or simply sit in the grassy bowl of a long-disused reservoir.
The Inglewood Oil Field was discovered near here in 1924. Today, from some of the park’s hilltops, you can still see hundreds of giant, bird-like machines bobbing up and down. They’re called pumpjacks, and every day they pump 7,500 barrels of oil out of the country’s largest urban oil field.
In 1947, the LA Department of Water and Power began construction on a large dam and reservoir. However, a great place for drilling oil turns out to be not such a great place to build a dam. It sat on an active fault line, and over the years the land beneath the reservoir shifted. On December 14, 1963, the dam collapsed. KTLA news helicopters televised the whole catastrophe—five deaths and the loss of five hundred homes—in one of the first broadcasts of live aerial footage.
Today these 401 acres are protected for the people and wildlife of Los Angeles. The site of the former reservoir is now the grassy bowl of Janice’s Green Valley. That industrialized oil drilling and dam building are responsible for such a tranquil scene is yet another example of Los Angeles’s ever-changing relationship with nature.
These hills are habitat for some species that have been displaced by urban sprawl in the LA Basin. When the park is open you can see animals and plants of all sorts. But what about at night? Scientists from the Natural History Museum put motion activated cameras in the hills to see what animals use the park after dark. As expected they saw coyotes and raccoons, but they were happily surprised when gray foxes turned up. It turns out the park and surrounding Baldwin Hills are full of wildlife, some here because of humans (abandoned cats, dogs, and rabbits), some because they tend to do well near urban areas (raccoons, opossums, mice, and rats), and some because this space is far enough from urbanization that they can make do (the gray fox).
Humans are taking the hint, building a new thirteen-mile trail to increase connectivity between wildlife habitats. Once it’s completed, people and animals will be able to safely walk all the way from Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area to Venice Beach. The trail is scheduled to open in 2019, and scientists will be interested in seeing which animals use the new path.
Parts of this park are covered with coastal sage scrub habitat. Among the usual scrub habitat suspects, you’ll spot coastal prickly pear cactus. In places it adorns hillsides like a giant prickly blanket. Starting in late spring prickly pears set forth their bright reddish-purple-colored fruits—called tuna in Spanish and prickly pear in English—the La Tuna Canyon offramp on the 210 Freeway, and the wildfire that burned here in the autumn of 2017, are named for them.
The fruits are edible and can be turned into jams and candies or used as a novelty ingredient in cocktails. The spiny pads of the cactus are also delicious. The spines are a defense mechanism for protection from hungry animals, but people have been removing spines and eating cactus pads in salads, salsas, and stews for centuries.
Birdwatchers have identified 174 species of birds in the park. It would be a surprise for visitors not to see black phoebes flitting around the grassy areas looking for insects. Down by the fishing pond, water birds are in residence year-round. Mallards and American coots are easy to spot any time, but keep a close eye out for smaller creatures. Aquatic snails cling to rocks along the pond’s edge. If you take a moment to watch, you’ll see them busy at work, scraping algae off the rocks with their tiny, rasping mouthparts—this is why aquarium owners love to keep snails in their tanks: free cleaning!
Although it’s unlikely you’ll see one of the Baldwin Hills’ gophersnakes on your visit, you could easily spot their favorite food, the gopher. A giant clan of Botta’s pocket gophers call the park home and you’ll often see them peeking out of their well-engineered holes, weighing the need to find food with the desire to avoid predators. A not-so-wary gopher can become an unlucky bulge in a four-foot-long gopher snake’s middle if it isn’t careful.
Visiting the park throughout the year will reveal a surprise each season. Nesting birds in spring, lizards sunbathing in summer and fall, and mushrooms, snails, and slugs after winter rains.
Just four miles from downtown Los Angeles, visit a bee hotel, dip your toes in a fountain, and get elbow deep in a compost bin.
Imagine tearing up asphalt parking lots and thirsty lawns and planting an urban wilderness in their place. A few years ago, that is exactly what the Natural History Museum did.
Museum scientists wanted to create a space that looked and felt like Los Angeles’s altered nature—a space where visitors could see native and introduced species of trees, shrubs, and wildlife from throughout the city. Every plant, every rock, every dead tree trunk was placed for maximum habitat value. If an animal couldn’t eat it, drink it, live or hide in it, then it didn’t make the cut. As a result, visitors are guaranteed to see a diversity of the area’s wild neighbors any day they come.
Pollen comes in a huge variety of colors. Look closely at this honey bee’s pollen sacs. They’re purple because it has been collecting purple pollen from this Phacelia plant.
As they dug the pond and removed the lawns, construction workers found interesting objects. An old medicine bottle here, a broken plate there, even parts of old agricultural machinery. Museum historians collected over one thousand objects and linked almost all of them to the late 1880s. There was once a racetrack right next to where the Museum sits now—with a grandstand to sit in and a saloon to drink at. The first automobile race in Los Angeles was held here, and some say a number of camel races, too! (Staff haven’t found any camel bones yet.)
To explore the gardens, pick up a Museum map and take a walk—any path will do. Every day there’s something different to discover. Look out for five fifty-foot floss silk trees. These green-barked trees were planted over fifty years ago, and Museum staff worked hard to protect them during construction. As one Museum scientist put it, “I can almost imagine elves swinging down from the branches as I walk beneath them.” No elves live in these trees, but exotic parrots often visit. Yellow-chevroned parakeets are also frequent visitors, especially in springtime when they feed on the large seedpods.
The Living Wall was designed to have lots of nooks and crannies where plants can grow and animals can hide.
This pond is home to hundreds of tiny fish, called arroyo chub, and a variety of immature insects, from dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, to backswimmers and midges.
Flame skimmer dragonflies are often seen resting on plants around the pond. They sit still and wait, not moving until something tasty flies by or a photographer gets too close.
Explore the Living Wall and take time to look in all the nooks and crannies for crickets, spiders, and snails. Draping rosemary scents the air with volatile oils. Gently rub the waxy coated leaves (the wax helps the plant stay hydrated) and take a whiff—delicious to us, but a huge deterrent for insects.
There are good views of the waterfall from the pond bridge or the dock, which is also a good spot to catch a glimpse of the creatures living in this underwater habitat. The only fish living in the pond are arroyo chub, introduced as a natural form of mosquito control. Once abundant in the LA River, today chub can only be found in its upper reaches. Camera traps have caught hundreds of birds and mammals stopping by the pond for a drink or a bath. You can see the images inside the Nature Lab.
Over 170 bird species have been documented in the Nature Gardens. The three best spots to see them are:
• At the pond, bathing and drinking in the area above the waterfall. American crows have been seen dunking bread rolls in the water to soften them up before eating.
• By the Wildlife Viewing Platform, where feeders offer niger seeds. Below the feeders, you can see dusky-colored mourning doves picking at the fallen seeds. The most common bird seen clinging to the feeders has a reddish colored head and brown body—the common house finch.
• By the sugar-water feeders, visited in all but the rainiest weather by hummingbirds. There are usually two species—Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds—but occasionally rufous hummingbirds pass through in late winter on their way to southern Alaska.
The Nature Gardens were planted to attract the many bees (almost five hundred species!) that live in Los Angeles County. A number of homes for bees have been set up around the garden. These are not your standard bee hives—they’re for solitary native bees. Unlike honey bees, which live in a communal hive with one queen bee, solitary bees do all their own work—collecting their own food, building their own nests, laying their own eggs, and caring for their young. Don’t worry about getting stung. Because they have no queen and hive to protect, solitary bees are quite docile and slow to use their stingers in defense. Museum scientists have discovered fifteen species of bees using the Nature Gardens as habitat.
Don’t throw away those old wooden fence posts, they can be reclaimed and turned into a hotel for native solitary bees. Over 200 quarter-inch holes, 3–4 inches deep, were drilled into the wood to make the Museum’s bee hotels.
The raised beds of the Erika J. Glazer Family Edible Garden might remind you of the produce section at your local grocery store. Depending on the season, a variety of familiar and exotic fruits, herbs, and vegetables grow here—everything from tomatoes, basil, and eggplants (a pizza garden!), to less well-known garden offerings like peanuts (you won’t be able to see them because they grow underground), okra, lemongrass, and papaya. This garden is also home to an array of beneficial bugs. There are over ten species of ladybugs—from the locally abundant convergent ladybug to the less common twice-struck ladybug. Twice-struck ladybugs break the classic ladybug mold of a red beetle with black spots. Instead, they’re black with two prominent red spots—hence the evocative name. More ladybugs mean fewer aphids and other undesirable insects—great news for the Museum gardeners.
The Erika J. Glazer Family Edible Garden shows that food for humans and habitat for wildlife can coexist in the same space.
The gardens were designed to function as a field site for studying nature in Los Angeles. They’re a place for Museum scientists and the public to work together. An insect trap is set up to study the small flying insects that call this patch of urban wilderness home. A bat detector sits atop a pole by the pond, listening for bat echolocation signals every night. And camera traps, like the one near the pond, are moved around the Gardens to monitor what happens after staff and visitors go home.
Hidden in a hard-to-find canyon above Beverly Hills is a small reservoir surrounded by cattails and trees. It’s perfect for spotting wood ducks and basking turtles or staging a romantic picnic.
Franklin Canyon may seem familiar. Thanks to its proximity to Hollywood, the park has appeared in hundreds of TV shows and films. Most infamously, the reservoir appears in the 1954 classic Creature from the Black Lagoon. Maybe this is one reason there is no swimming or fishing allowed in the reservoir! It was also the spooky setting for scenes from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Silence of the Lambs, and Twin Peaks.
This park owes a lot to two very powerful early Angelenos, William Mulholland and Edward Doheny. In 1914 Mulholland and the LA Department of Water and Power constructed two reservoirs in Franklin Canyon—one in the upper canyon, and a larger one in the lower canyon. Then in 1935, oil baron Edward L. Doheny built his family a summer retreat and cattle ranch, part of which is still standing today. This protected the area for a time, but in the 1970s, activists had to step in to block planned residential developments.
In 1981, the National Park Service purchased 605 acres in the canyon—including the three-acre, upper reservoir. Today, you can visit the nature center named after Sooky Goldman, a prominent activist in the fight to protect this green space. The center is operated by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and has variable open hours. Stop in to chat with a ranger or a volunteer Wednesday through Sunday to find out about programs and check out exhibits on local plants, animals, and cultural history.
Franklin Canyon’s ponds are good places to look for frogs and turtles, although the most common species, like this bullfrog or the ubiquitous red-eared sliders, are both introduced to California.
Along much of the banks of the reservoir thick growths of cattails—a common wetland plant—obscure your view. They are great for wildlife to hide in and are easiest to identify when the seed heads are present. Look for a brown, cigar-like growth that is velvety to the touch. Eventually, these disintegrate into a mass of cottony fluff and the individual seeds are carried away by the wind.
Take a walk under the low hanging branches of the deodar cedar near the reservoir—brush your hands over the short, spiky, green needles and take a whiff. The needles are scented with oils—including cedrol, used by the ancient Egyptians to embalm bodies—which help the tree protect itself from attacks by insects and fungi. This elegant evergreen tree is originally from the Himalayas. The reservoir isn’t natural either. No matter how good it feels to us, here’s something to contemplate—what makes nature authentic?
Introduced species aren’t “supposed” to be here. They can wreak havoc on native species and ecosystems. But then again, today’s migrating birds rely on this “unnatural” body of water. Nature in Los Angeles offers no easy answers to tough questions.
To see the maximum number of birds at this site, your best approach is silence. However, there are many species to see even if your group has trouble staying quiet. Community scientists and bird enthusiasts have documented 150 bird species in the upper canyon, and 90 in the lower canyon. The reservoir is home to year-round residents like the mallard ducks, while spring and fall migrants stop by for a break from their travels along the Pacific Flyway.
While wandering the trails, keep your eyes open for lines of small holes around tree branches and trunks. These are made by red-breasted sapsuckers. Every year, some of these striking woodpeckers fly down from Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest to spend the winter in our mild climate. Their name tells you something about how they feed—think of them as avian syrup farmers. They drill regular lines of holes, each about the size of BB gun shot, to tap the trees for their sweet sap. Throughout the day they revisit the holes to sip on the sap that’s leaked out and feast on any insects caught in the sticky mess.
Many people admire the iridescent-green heads of male mallard ducks, but the wood ducks that live year-round at Heavenly Pond give them a run for their money in the costume department. As with most other birds, the male wood duck is showier (egg-laying females can hide better from predators if they blend in with their surroundings), with a multicolored bill and bright red eyes. Wood ducks nest in trees—they are one of the few ducks that have strong claws that can grip branches. Hooded mergansers are also cavity nesters, building in abandoned woodpecker holes, old snags, and tree cavities. Like many people, both of these duck species like quiet waters surrounded by large, old trees.
It’s almost impossible to miss the turtles. On warm sunny days, they’ll be basking at the edge of the pond or on exposed tree roots and floating logs. The most common turtle species here are red-eared sliders and various soft-shelled turtles, which can have shells almost two feet long. None of these turtles is native to the area.
Sapsucker holes create a mini version of the La Brea Tar Pits for insects, and a bonanza of sweet sap and insect protein for the bird to eat.
In the late 1980s, Allan E. Edwards wanted to pinpoint the center of Los Angeles. Edwards was a retired US Geological Survey staffer turned amateur historian and long-time Franklin Canyon Park docent. To pinpoint the geographic center, he took a map of the city, cut along the city’s border and mounted it to cardboard. He then took the map and balanced it on a pin. Was it coincidence that the pin happened to stick in Edwards’ beloved park? To commemorate the spot, Edwards erected a plaque under a tree. Follow the trail north of the main parking area and stand for yourself in the point that could very well be the center of Los Angeles.
Brilliant views of the iconic Hollywood sign, the LA Basin and San Fernando Valley, and, on a clear day, the Pacific Ocean. Coyotes serenade early-evening hikers.
The view looking north: all of Burbank and the Verdugo Mountains stand in crisp relief on a winter’s day.
Griffith Park is huge! It’s the second largest city park in California, measuring just over 4,310 acres and bisecting Los Angeles’s urban sprawl. It sits at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, giving views of the San Fernando Valley to the north and west, Glendale and the Verdugo Mountains to the east, and the LA Basin to the south. An important space for nature in the city, it’s a corridor for some to move through, a year-round home for others, and a place for humans to connect with wildlife.
Around the year 1800, the Spanish government gave 6,647 acres of land to José Vicente Feliz as a reward for his work overseeing the civil administration of early Los Angeles. Rancho Los Feliz was born and included much of what is now Griffith Park and also some of the surrounding lowlands. In 1882, mining magnate Griffith J. Griffith purchased the land with plans for a series of public attractions that would help put Los Angeles on the map.
First, he opened an ostrich farm. A narrow-gauge railway took visitors from downtown to the attraction, where they could see herds of these giant African birds. After four years, Griffith closed the farm, but his passion was undeterred. In December of 1896, Griffith gave the land to the city as a Christmas gift. His only stipulation: “It must be made a place of recreation and rest for the masses.”
Today, millions of people visit Griffith Park every year. Of the many spots to visit—from the LA Zoo and Botanical Gardens to the old zoo site where Shakespeare in the Park plays are regularly staged—the Griffith Observatory and adjacent Mount Hollywood are among the most popular, particularly if a view of the iconic Hollywood sign is on the agenda.
The famous sign is visible from the observatory parking lot, but follow the Mount Hollywood trail a bit further up into the hills for a better view. Many believe that Hollywood was named for the California holly bush, also called toyon, that still grows on the hillsides, but this is just an urban legend. When originally constructed in 1923, the forty-five-foot-tall letters spelled out Hollywoodland, a name created by real estate developer Harvey Wilcox. In 1949, the last four letters were taken down, and today the sign acts as a symbol for Los Angeles’s movie industry—rather than its native plants or the urban development that replaced them.
Toyon, which shares a common name with the famous sign, bears bright red berries in winter. In the 1920s, the state outlawed collecting these holly berries on public land because they’d become so popular as a winter decoration. Look for it along the chaparral-covered hillsides.
Some of the most common plants in Griffith Park are the small and often twisted scrub oaks, which line the trail from Ferndell to the Observatory. Halfway between a shrub and tree—you wouldn’t want to climb or build a treehouse in them—they support a huge array of life and are easy to identify by their shiny dark green leaves cupped with spiky edges. Examine the oaks closely to discover birds, ants, and the round, tan galls—also called oak apples—that protect baby wasps.
As you hike towards Mount Hollywood, a line of non-native palm trees becomes visible. They grow in a section of the park called the Captain’s Roost, a folk garden planted in the 1940s by a man known only as the Captain. He cared for it until his death. Two other folk gardens grow elsewhere in the park, Dante’s and Amir’s gardens.
Dante’s View is closer to the top of Mount Hollywood (around the other side of the peak). It has picnic tables, drinking fountains, and a dog bowl for thirsty pups. Explore the terraced garden—there are lots of secret nooks with benches for quiet contemplation or friendly conversation.
The cultivated folk gardens sit in stark contrast to the park’s naturally occurring vegetation. The garden plants are greener and more lush and are landscaped with exotic plants that require irrigation. Some conservationists believe the gardens should be torn out and re-planted with native species, while folk garden supporters advocate their value for hikers, picnickers, dog walkers, and as part of the park’s history.
Between 1920 and 1960 John Comstock, one of the early entomology curators at the Natural History Museum, discovered fifty species of butterflies in Griffith Park. He gathered specimens and took field notes—all of which are still in the Museum’s collection today. In 2011, two local scientists teamed up to repeat the study. Dan Cooper and Tim Bonebrake followed in Comstock’s footsteps around Mount Hollywood and into the wilder, less explored parts of the park. They found forty of the fifty species, but ten were missing. These butterflies probably disappeared when the host plants that feed their caterpillars stopped growing in the park.
Why should we care about ten missing butterflies? Their disappearance points to the long-term impacts of urbanization and fire prevention on habitat. Griffith Park is a habitat island surrounded by an urban sea. Improving connectivity to nearby wildlands and increasing wildlife habitat in surrounding urban areas could help prevent future species declines and disappearances.
One butterfly still present in large numbers is the fiery skipper. On certain summer days, hundreds of them can be seen hilltopping. In this butterfly mate-location strategy, males fly to the top of a hill and wait for females to show up. It’s not just humans who think Mt. Hollywood is a great date spot!
Griffith Park’s most famous resident these days is the mountain lion P-22. The only lion known to have survived the hazardous crossing of the 101 and 405 freeways, he was first recorded on a camera trap in Griffith Park in 2012. His name, P-22, is an abbreviation for Puma-22, because he was the twenty-second puma collared and studied as part of the National Park Service’s urban carnivore research program. You can read more about P-22 and the other mountain lions of the Santa Monica Mountains on the National Park Service website (nps.gov/samo/learn/nature/pumapage).
You probably won’t get to see P-22 on your visit—he avoids humans and only comes out at night—but if you’re out early, you may see his tracks. They’re as big as salad plates, showing just the outline of the fleshy pads, because like domestic cats, a mountain lion’s claws are retractable. This is different than dog prints, where you can easily see claw marks. Also, cat heel pads have three lobes at the bottom versus the two lobes on dog heel pads. If you see dog prints on the trail, they could be from somebody’s pet or they could be from a coyote.
Nobody knows exactly how many coyotes live in Griffith Park, because no one has done a comprehensive study. Driving through the park at night, you can sometimes see them ambling along the roads, sidling through the golf course, or sauntering around the edges of the observatory. Picnic areas near the base of the hills are the best coyote-watching spots; at dusk, they often come out of the nearby chaparral to search for tasty picnic leftovers. At dawn you can sometimes see them returning home to bed down for the day. If you encounter them, look but don’t approach. Remember these are wild animals, and while they’re rarely aggressive, staying away helps them stay wild. It’s safer for all involved.
Having a park like this in the city’s backyard is a big deal. While parts of Los Angeles may be park poor—particularly the lowest income neighborhoods—Griffith Park is a huge resource for Angelenos to celebrate, enjoy, and protect. It is incredible that one of the world’s largest urban areas has maintained a park this size, and as pressure for development continues and tourism increases, it’s important for us to conserve this fragment of habitat.
A green and magical paradise just minutes from downtown that offers willow forests, herons, biking, kayaking, and fishing. Easy walks, pocket parks, sitting areas, and playgrounds make this a spot for all ages.
Kayaking the Glendale Narrows was piloted in 2013 and has grown increasingly popular. Although there are calm pools like this one, much of the route is made of easy to moderate rapids (Class I and II).
Many people don’t know Los Angeles has a river. Others consider the city’s concrete riverbed a glorified storm drain that shouldn’t count as a real river. The Frogtown section of the river helps to prove them all wrong. Go on an adventure and meet the damselflies, carp, and herons that call the river home. It’s your portal into our watery past.
The three and a half million barrels of cement that paved the LA River met their match in the Glendale Narrows. Here, water rising up from underground aquifers meant the cement would never harden, so the river was left with a soft bottom of sand and cobbles.
This part of the river, called the Glendale Narrows, is extra special. It’s one of only three sections that still has a soft, concrete-free, bottom. The other two soft-bottomed sections are the Sepulveda Basin and the area downstream of Willow Street (see Trips 3 and 23 for more details). A soft bottom allows trees and shrubs to take root. And where plants can grow, a whole community of birds, mammals, insects, fungi, and other organisms can thrive.
The Glendale Narrows weren’t paved over because the bedrock that raises the Santa Monica Mountains is just barely below ground here. Water from underground aquifers is forced to the surface, so this part of the river has above-ground water for much of the year. Springs, pools, and backwaters dot the Narrows, and wildlife take full advantage. This soft-bottomed section starts on the north side of Griffith Park near the Bette Davis Picnic Area and continues with only a few concrete interruptions as the river turns south between Griffith Park and Glendale, all the way until it passes under the 110 Freeway.
Driving over the bridges that border Frogtown (Fletcher Avenue to the north, and Riverside Drive/Figueroa Street to the south) you get glimpses of a more natural space than the stark concrete channel that shoots through downtown. The predominant plants on the islands are native willow trees and stands of invasive arundo. Both provide cover for birds, insects, and the coyotes and bobcats that use the river as a wildlife corridor.
Another easily-spotted weed along the river has uses both medicinal and deadly. Castor bean plants have spiky seedpods and large, eight-fingered leaves that are typically green, though sometimes purple. The pods grow seeds the size of a coffee bean, which contain the castor oil used in medicine, in soap manufacturing, and as a perfume base. However, they also contain a toxic chemical called ricin, which is poisonous if ingested. Ricin has been used in many Hollywood plotlines (notably, the television series Breaking Bad).
As you stroll or bike along the river, you may see people fishing. If you want to have a go, be sure to get the appropriate California Department of Fish and Wildlife license.
Friends of the LA River conducted a study in 2008, which looked at fish in this section of the river. Scientists sampled the river with seine nets and spoke with local anglers. They documented 1,214 individual fish representing eight species, none of which were native to the area. Mosquitofish, which local vector control officers put in urban ponds to keep mosquito levels down, were the most common. Coming in second was non-native tilapia, an African fish commonly seen on restaurant menus.
Not all fishing in the LA River is done by humans. Osprey, also known as fish eagles, are frequently seen in this part of the river. If you’re lucky, you might see one dive and catch a fish in its sharp talons. They often eat the stunned fish atop the light poles that dot the riverbanks.
Other natural dramas unfold in the murky depths of the river. Hiding amongst the reedy edges of the river are fearsome predators: baby damselflies (the dragonfly’s more petite and slender cousin). When they hatch, out of eggs the size of a rice grain, these babies are hungry. Immature damselflies are sit-and-wait predators, patiently waiting for lunch from a sheltered spot. When another insect, tiny fish, or even another damselfly swims by, its huge eyes sense the movement, and within a microsecond it thrusts forward jaws of death to grab its prey. Though voracious, they only grow to about an inch in length, and their fierce jaws are no match for larger predators, including fish and birds. Even large dragonfly nymphs will eat damselflies. It’s a dangerous underwater world: eat or be eaten.
Although this neighborhood is listed on the map as Elysian Valley, it is also called Frogtown. Walking along the asphalt bike lanes, there are murals and sculptures of frogs, but living, breathing frogs are now uncommon.
The name dates back to the 1930s. In summer, thousands of baby frogs—at their smallest about the size of a corn kernel—would emerge from the river, walking up the concrete banks onto sidewalks and into residents’ yards. This continued through the 1950s and 1960s. One resident recalls walking along the street and finding it hard not to step on dozens of them at a time. Neighborhood kids started calling the area Frogtown and the name stuck.
The frogs in question were probably western toads. Following winter rains, these toads go into a breeding frenzy, with each female capable of laying over ten thousand eggs. Several months later, the tadpoles develop legs and metamorphose into tiny toadlets, which then go marching across the landscape in search of insects to eat and new places to call home. Toads are frogs, so the name Frogtown is still technically correct, but Toadtown would be more appropriate.
In recent years, western toads have become rare in Frogtown. Perhaps once a year, a lone toad is spotted along the bike path or in a backyard garden. The springs, pools, and backchannels that once made this region ideal for toads have been destroyed, and the upland habitat is now paved over and crisscrossed by streets. The channelized river provides few microhabitats safe from floods, so eggs, tadpoles, and adults can be easily washed away. Plus, non-native predators abound: mosquito fish eat toad eggs and tadpoles, sunfish and bass eat toadlets, and the American bullfrog eats all stages from tadpoles to adult toads.
Museum entomologist Lisa Gonzalez samples the river for aquatic insects, which can say a lot about the river’s water quality and ecosystem. Swarms of mayflies, for example, feed bats, swallows, and swifts.
Habitat restoration is the act of restoring or renewing habitat that’s been degraded by human activities. Few places illustrate its importance in urban areas as well as the pocket parks along the LA River. The concrete embankments of the river are almost void of wildlife and plants, but a few steps away in the pocket parks, it’s another story. Community activists and agencies like the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority have worked together to build spaces that celebrate nature and provide habitat for a mix of wildlife. See for yourself in Marsh, Rattlesnake, or Egret park.
Try to find a western fence lizard on the concrete-lined riverbanks. You almost certainly can’t—but a few feet away, you’ll find many. Walk through Marsh Park and the lizards will tell you what they view as good habitat. You won’t find them on paths or in the lawns, but instead hiding under woody plants or sunning themselves amongst the boulders and cobbles. They never stray too far into the open, staying close to cover in case danger comes knocking. This mosaic of urban hardscape and newer, native plantings provides a good outdoor classroom for anyone interested in making urban Los Angeles more wildlife friendly.
Steelhead Park sits close to the southern end of the bike trail. Steelhead are a special kind of rainbow trout that live in the ocean most of their lives. Like salmon, they swim upriver to lay eggs. Unlike salmon, a steelhead doesn’t die at this point, but returns to the ocean to continue its life. It can swim upstream every season for many years.
Today, the only steelhead in the park are sculpted on fences. But this native fish used to breed in the LA River and many other rivers along California’s coast. Recently, scientists have seen them investigating the river’s mouth in Long Beach. They were last confirmed in the LA River in the 1940s, but with luck, planning, and some changes to the riverbed, they could one day return.
Standing on top of the Sunnynook Bridge, the view north hints at what the river might have looked like (minus the electrical wires and tower) before Europeans arrived.
Museum ornithologist Kimball Garrett surveys the Narrows for bird life. Over 170 species of birds have been recorded in this section of the river.
This hilly park offers spectacular views of downtown and the Arroyo Seco. Visit the Audubon Center, see native walnut trees, and experience the coolness of Peanut Lake.
Debs Park abuts the Arroyo Seco just a few miles up from its confluence with the LA River near the intersection of the 5 and the 110 freeways. It also sits at a confluence of another sort, a place where two fault systems meet—the east-west–running Santa Monica fault system and the Whittier fault system which runs northwest-southeast. Water and earthquakes have worked together to form the topography here—uplifting at the faults created hills, and rivers carved out valleys.
Debs Park and the Mount Washington neighborhood immediately across the Arroyo Seco sit at the southwestern end of the San Rafael Hills, which extend north to Descanso Gardens. The park’s 282 acres offer valuable open space for city dwellers and wildlife alike. They house charismatic fauna like secretive bobcats and soaring red-tailed hawks, spectacular flora like native California walnuts, and trails, benches, and shady spots to enjoy.
The Debs Park Audubon Center is the Audubon Society’s very first urban nature center, built for the people of Northeast Los Angeles to help preserve local bird life. Today the center carries on its conservation mission with solar panels on the roof and a native plant garden that conserves water.
The gardens here were designed with wildlife and people in mind. A small pond provides places for dragonflies to lay eggs and thirsty animals to drink. Native sage and buckwheat plants, the same species that live naturally in the park, help extend habitat for the creatures that call Debs Park home. For humans, there are benches to sit on and, under a towering Peruvian pepper tree, space for kids to play in the mulch and get their hands dirty. Audubon educators lead programs for children, families, and adults. Check their website for programming (debspark.audubon.org).
One hundred and thirty species of birds have been found in Debs Park. They build nests in the vegetation, visit bushes, flowers, and trees for seeds or nectar, and swim in Peanut Lake. The most common birds found on the lake are mallard ducks, but you’ll also see black phoebes dipping through the air catching bugs and, in breeding season, collecting mud from the banks to build their nests. Other birds easily seen year-round include mourning doves looking for seeds on the ground, California scrub-jays flashing their blue feathers, and California towhees, which are brown with pumpkin-colored under-butts.
As in most parks, the mix of vegetation here is a patchwork of California natives and introduced species. At the top of the park, you may be greeted by ravens croaking from Southern California black walnut trees. After the zombie apocalypse, this is the tree you need to find. People in this region have eaten the Southern California black walnut for thousands of years. It’ll require some effort, and your hands and clothes might get stained, but if you manage to pry open a walnut shell, you can eat the nut inside, just like the Gabrieleño/Tongva and Chumash have done for generations.
Entire hillsides in Debs Park can be covered in wild mustard, one of the area’s earliest introduced plants. After spring rains, mustard plants explode into a bloom of bright yellow flowers. Some say European settlers purposefully planted coastal hillsides with the flowering mustard as a navigation tool for ship’s captains. Others tell the story of Gaspar de Portolà’s expedition planting them along the trail to mark the route of his expedition north from Mexico in 1769. Still others think the seeds were brought accidentally with imported livestock.
Ravens frequently perch in the trees at the top of Debs Park, flying to the ground to grab a walnut or some carelessly discarded human food.
Whatever the mode of introduction, wild mustard now blankets much of California. Native people displaced by the incoming Spanish harvested the leaves and also collected the seeds, grinding them up to make a flavorful paste akin to whole grain mustards available in grocery stores today. Its raw leaves can be harvested for salads or cooking like other mustard greens.
Introduced snails are especially common in this park, including milk snails, which are descended from snails escaped from escargot farms. Even in dry summer months, the snails can be seen attached to plant stems, where they’ve sealed off their shell to wait out hot weather. After a rain, they unseal themselves to find food and a mate. Just like the wild mustard, these snails can be eaten. Wild mustard and California walnut pesto on snails, anyone?
In 2014, staff at the Audubon Center caught images of a bobcat on camera traps around the park. Bobcats can use this park because it’s connected to wilder spaces—to Griffith Park via the LA River, and to the San Gabriel Mountains via the Arroyo Seco. River channels make handy nighttime highways.
You can retrace the steps the bobcat might have taken down from the San Gabriel Mountains. Start at the Red Box trailhead (4,640 feet in elevation) and follow the Gabrieleño Trail all the way down to Hahamongna Watershed Park. The Arroyo Seco eventually meets up with Debs Park. It’s about twenty miles, a long trek whether you have human or bobcat legs!
A water-wise Mediterranean getaway featuring bright orange hooded orioles and other vivid birds.
If your favorite side of the crayon box had the oranges, reds, and yellows, this site will be a delicious treat. Flowers blossom year-round and orange trees remind us of Pasadena’s agricultural heritage. Too sunny? Find an awning over a patio table. Feeling chilly? Move into the sun. Even on a quiet and foggy morning, the many chairs and stone-lined nooks invite visitors to dawdle, doodle, and daydream.
This garden occupies a corner of a now-forgotten estate owned by the Durand family, whose fifty-room mansion was once the grandest house in Pasadena. Its three stories featured mahogany doors and gold-plated doorknobs. Tastes change, fortunes dwindle, and termites chew, chew, chew. The house had to be torn down, and thanks to unimaginative urban planning, the empty lot became a Caltrans yard.
Love, mulch, trowels, and persistence eventually transformed this site into a remarkable example of xeriscaping—landscaping with drought-tolerant, low-water plants. You can experience twenty-five “rooms” organized by theme, including the vernal pool, the arroyo, the succulent garden, the labyrinth, and the oak grove. The labyrinth was built by local schoolchildren and the seemingly ancient tree shading it is a thick-trunked, personality-rich Peruvian pepper. The flowers and shrubs that provide understory color include heuchera (coral bells), hummingbird sage, ceanothus, and California and European poppies.
Arlington Garden teaches us that public parks don’t all need to be expanses of thirsty grass. On average, this garden uses 80 percent less water than a conventional park—and offers a great model for alternative park design.
Many of the birds found at Arlington, including acorn woodpeckers and yellow-chevroned parakeets, can be found on multiple excursions in this book. One bird, though, is more likely here than anyplace else: the red-whiskered bulbul, named after the red teardrop on its cheek. This medium-sized, black-and-white bird is native to Asia. Its head swoops upward into an over-gelled mohawk, and under the tail a flash of pure scarlet resembles very red underwear. Bulbuls usually flock together (or at least stick in pairs), exploring small, close-to-the-ground bushes or perching on phone lines or in the tippy-tops of trees. Their upswept hairdo is shared by only a few local birds, so even just in profile, they’re easy to check off the list.
Other species found here include Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds (spring and summer), eastern fox squirrels (all year), western fence lizards, southern alligator lizards, and many different sparrows and warblers.
As the saying goes, the nose knows. It can be a treat to let your nose take you through the gardens. Lavender and rosemary, three kinds of sage, blossoming orange trees, wisteria and climbing roses, and a dozen other traces and layers of smell that only a master perfumer could sort out—the senses receive a full workout here. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “the earth laughs in flowers.” At this site, the laughter is full and rich and lasts all day.
Los Angeles’s top dragonfly site is reached by taking a stroll through a wild cactus garden. Search for scorpions with a black light or watch summer nighthawks zoom after moths.
Los Angeles is a mix of contradictions, and this trip is no exception. From some of the cactus-lined trails you can imagine you’re in Baja California or an exotic desert. Yet after a short hike in summer, you come to a year-round stream where cottonwoods and dragonflies shimmer green in the sun, and, with a bit of imagination, you can picture the once-common grizzly bears last seen in Los Angeles at this exact spot in 1916.
Tujunga Wash is classic “flash flood landscape.” Years of flood events have deposited a thick layer of gravel and water-polished boulders. As the canyon opens up and the ground levels out, the water slows and spreads out, dropping the interesting mix of rocks we can investigate today. Tujunga Wash is a giant library, but one of stones, not books. A close study reveals a galaxy of colors, textures, and geological processes.
The ground here is porous—it’s super sandy—so there’s little water available near the surface and no rich soil. This creates an alluvial wash, a mini-desert where the plants are more typical of a place like Joshua Tree National Park.
Tujunga Wash is a prime example of our ephemeral waterways—dry in summer and fall, filled with water from rain and snowmelt in winter and spring.
Oro Vista Park has a native plant garden, picnic tables shaded by pepper trees and eucalyptus, and plenty of parking. Dogs are welcome but must be leashed.
This is a special kind of park—you won’t find green lawns or playgrounds, but instead an intact and too-rare community of chaparral yuccas, California quail, coast horned lizards, and golden cholla. The park is fenced but just follow the path to find openings where you can connect to trails that wander out into the wash and lead over to the stream. Your downstream turn-around point is the Angeles National Golf Club—you can’t miss it.
In the stony maze of the wash, yucca plants, prickly pear, and cholla cactus thrive, as well as birds we don’t often think of when we say Los Angeles, including rock wrens, lesser nighthawks, and phainopeplas.
Another specialty of this site is a bird of dusk and dawn, the lesser nighthawk. Nighthawks are long-winged and acrobatic, swooping and banking as they chase down moths and other nocturnal insects. This is an easy bird to learn because they have white bars near the ends of their slender wings, and their turning flight dips and rises over the horizon in the twilight sky. This flight style makes the nighthawk resemble a cross between an anxious falcon and a slightly drunk bat.
By day, look for rock wrens among the cactus and boulders. This dinky, ground-hugging bird with a slender beak about as long as its own head is a skilled spider-catcher and lives here because of the rocks, not the stream. Rock wrens get most of their water from their food, rarely needing to take a drink. They have an amazing range of songs—perhaps over one hundred—which the males give while doing deep knee bends.
The chance to find scorpions in their native habitat makes this a nighttime adventure option. All you need is an ultraviolet flashlight (models can be purchased online for under twenty dollars). Scientists aren’t exactly sure why, but scorpions glow under black lights, which makes them easy to find.
Researchers who study scorpions will sweep a beam of UV light across a sandy path as they walk. Pay attention to the space under bushes and rocks. You might have a few false positives with bits of trash, but keep at it. When you’re finally lucky enough to see the brilliant glow of this nocturnal predator, it’s worth it!
After stepping through the fence, you can hike in several directions. Many people like to check out the stream first. Look to your right for the long, white concrete wall installed to control flooding. It tells you where the streambed is. As you get closer, you’ll see arroyo willows and Fremont cottonwoods. All along the stream, dragonflies hover and dart.
Twenty-eight species of dragonflies and damselflies have been documented in Tujunga Wash, high diversity for such an urban-adjacent spot. Skimmers, darners, and amberwings prefer the calmer, vegetated sides of the stream, while ringtails and sanddragons prefer the running water in the middle of the rocky creekbed.
If the wash is dry in a drought year, head over to Haines Creek (check the map or just walk towards the line of tall trees between the neighborhood and the golf course), which is partially fed by urban runoff. Most of the dragons and damsels aren’t picky—they’ll go where the water is.
Neon skimmer dragonflies have eyes that cover almost their entire head. Not much can fly by without their noticing.
This blue dasher dragonfly takes a rest from flying and basks in the sunlight. Dragonflies regulate their body temperature by moving from shade to sun.
Picnic under hundred-year-old trees, try your luck on the world’s first disc golf course, or visit three different forests—oak, willow, and streamside—in a single hike.
Hahamongna Watershed Park is a three hundred-acre preserve that provides a transition between foothill communities in Los Angeles and the vast open space of the Angeles National Forest. Lined with coast live oaks on each side, the central catchment basin protects an important willow forest. This open area is both storm control and recharge basin, meaning that water is collected in order to prevent flooding and also to replenish underground aquifers.
There’s no wrong way to visit this site, which is open sunrise to sunset and offers different kinds of recreation. Trail runners come to crank out the miles, disc golfers (bags bulging with ten kinds of Frisbee) arc shots post to post, and birders check “lerp-filled” trees for visiting migrants. Of course, you don’t really need a focus. Some people just come to walk the dog.
In rainy winters, a lake forms upstream from Devil’s Gate Dam. Though it’s usually gone by the end of spring, the dense thickets of willows, crisscrossed by dozens of game trails, remind us the water is just below the surface, flowing year round through the gravel and sand. If you listen closely, you can almost hear it. This site was once called Oak Grove Park, a name still found on some maps and signs.
With spreading canopies and an enduring majesty, the thick-trunked coast live oaks here remind us of an older California. The biggest are hundreds of years old, so stop a moment to admire their longevity. They’ve lived through many cycles of flood and drought, fire and earthquake. Grizzly bears sharpened their claws on some, and their rich acorn crops have fed generations of scrub-jays, woodpeckers, and Native Americans.
Forest number two is at the bottom of the basin, where most of the densely packed, leafy trees are willows, thirty feet tall and ready for the next flood. You’ll also find dense thickets of mulefat, interspersed with young cottonwoods. The boom or bust cycle of floods that fill this basin up with sand and scour the banks with rushing water turns out to be very good for maintaining a healthy mix of native plants. The willow forest here is one of Los Angeles’s finest.
At the top end of the open space, starting at the short bridge next to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Millard Canyon trail takes you upstream through forest number three, a riparian haven filled with sycamores and alders. The higher you go, the more terrain closes in, with mountains rising thousands of feet into the Angeles Crest high country.
At night, bears, bobcats, night birds called poorwills (a moth-eating owl-lookalike), and even the occasional mountain lion all use this canyon as their expressway connecting the lowlands to the highlands. In the morning, look for their tracks or droppings and see who has been passing through.
Traversing the east side of the park, the trail crosses under oaks as it heads upstream toward the JPL campus.
Over two hundred species of birds have been seen in the area. If you haven’t added acorn woodpecker to your list yet, this is a good place to look, especially around the parking lot on the west side. Remember: you’ll probably hear them before you see them.
The western toad is also found here. You won’t see them very often though. Much of their lives are spent underground in mammal burrows. They do come above ground during the early spring breeding season or summer while looking for food, but they’re often nocturnal. Besides habitat loss, their decline can be blamed on hungry non-native American bullfrogs, which you might also spot in some of these ponds.
The soft mud on the edges of ponds, lakes, and reservoirs is an excellent spot to search for animal tracks: raccoon feet, deer hooves, or large, round bobcat paws all leave impressions in the damp ground, revealing who comes out after dark. Mornings bring bird song, including willow flycatchers in spring. By midday, a damp, salty stretch of earth will have attracted a cluster of eager butterflies looking for minerals, a behavior called puddling.
This western tiger swallowtail rests on an oak branch. You’ll find its caterpillars feeding on the park’s plentiful willow leaves.
This basin has some space age history. The collegiate-looking buildings along the upper border of the park make up NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the facility that sends rovers to Mars and cameras whizzing by Pluto. Although the campus is fenced off, it’s okay to follow the trails on the public side of the fence.
JPL is here not for the good view or the lunchtime sessions of disc golf, but because this canyon used to be more isolated. Nearby science and engineering institute Caltech started out in the 1890s in what was then semi-rural Pasadena. As housing density grew around the main campus, so did the size of some of the experiments. When Caltech’s Pasadena neighbors got tired of rocket engine experiments, all of which were loud and some of which blew up, the Upper Arroyo Seco, over the years a trash dump and a gravel mine, seemed like a good place to relocate. These days you won’t find any exploding rocket engines, but JPL is now the center of some two dozen amazing space missions—some call it “the center of the universe”—and its lush campus provides good grazing for local mule deer herds.
Some dams are intended to make things happen, to generate electricity or store drinking water. Devil’s Gate Dam was built to keep things from happening. It was built in 1920 to guard against flooding. It catches the massive debris flows that churn regularly out of the San Gabriels and helps keep mud off roadways and out of living rooms in Highland Park.
If there’s no winter lake, you can hike up to the interior side of the dam and compare the 1920 version with the 1990 update just east. It sweeps up in a curl of truly impressive concrete. The large orange barriers tied down with chains help control trash.
Hike to the base of a forty-foot waterfall, and in spring discover an amazing variety of wildflowers. Even more exciting, explore where Los Angeles’s dirt came from!
This oak titmouse just scored a caterpillar lunch. As their name implies, these birds are common residents in oak woods.
Eaton Canyon extends down the Angeles Crest from high country into Altadena and is home to interesting plants, chittering flocks of birds, and a popular, stream-hopping hike that ends at a year-round (usually) waterfall. Called El Precipicio by the Spanish because of its steep gorges, this canyon was later named after Pasadena Judge Benjamin Smith Eaton. It has been home to many things in the past two hundred years, including an olive orchard, a gold mine, and a rocket-testing base during World War II. Now its popular nature center is a good place to learn about local wildlife and top off your water bottles before your hike.
From the parking lot, the open wash—also called an arroyo—looks like a rock garden. It was once a river that connected with the ocean at Long Beach, but now its water flows underground and is collected downstream, helping supply Pasadena and Altadena. As you hike upstream, water usually starts to flow above ground about halfway to the waterfall.
The jumbled stones in dozens of shapes and colors remind us we are surrounded by young, active, very tall mountains, which are constantly in motion. For thousands of years, floods from Eaton Canyon sent walls of mud, water, and stones crashing down to spread out in the lowlands. If we could lift back foothill towns and freeways like a blanket, we’d see a series of interconnected alluvial fans—debris flows from mountain canyons fanned out across the top half of Los Angeles like a line of superhero capes.
In Glendale and Pasadena, the concrete sidewalks lie over layers of debris washed down from the San Gabriel Mountains. The concrete is maybe six inches thick. Outwash from canyons like Eaton can be nearly a thousand feet thick.
To reach the waterfall, follow any of the paths going up-canyon from the nature center. Stay on either the most well-traveled trail or the one that sticks truest to the stream. You might have to get your feet wet hopping back and forth across the stream at the upper end.
Many of the native plants reviewed throughout this book are present, as well as newcomers from elsewhere. Fennel, once native to Europe and now a common weed along trails and roadsides, is a tall, airy bush with feathery leaves and small yellow flowers. If you crush the leaves and stems, you’ll smell the distinct and delicious aroma of licorice.
Another plant worth a moment of olfactory pleasure is California sagebrush. Watch for a bush with feathery foliage and a pale, green-gray color—classic “sage green.” Sagebrushes are different than sages, but both can be used in cooking and made into teas.
Some days, Eaton’s bouquet bursts from every corner on the trail. A lovely spring flower to watch for is showy (also called royal) penstemon, a stalk-like flower with a row of fabulous violet blossoms, usually edged in a deep, saturated blue. The abundant yellow flowers that look like daisies go by the name brittlebush or California bush sunflower. In early spring they turn long sections of trail a vivid yellow.
Plants like these demonstrate that nature is not static. The last big fire here in the 1990s took away a lot of trees and chaparral plants (and burned down the previous nature center). Yet in doing so, it opened up space for fennel, sage, and other open-air vegetation.
Traversing stepping stones, looking for tiny creek dwelling insects, or just listening to the water tumble by in Eaton Creek is a fun, all-ages adventure.
Visiting Eaton Canyon after rain is a mushroom-lover’s delight. Here we have turkey tail and an orange jelly fungus growing side by side on a fallen log.
After sprouting from seeds in the ground, the dodder plant has five to ten days to find a host plant with its tendrils or it will die.
The dense green wads or tangles high up in the sycamores is mistletoe, the same kind you’re supposed to kiss under at Christmas. Far from romantic, mistletoe is a parasite that taps into its host’s nutrients, like a tick stuck on your dog. Birds eat mistletoe berries, but they can’t digest the seeds. Instead, they poop them out onto the branches of other trees, where a new plant will grow.
Another parasite looks like somebody played a Silly String prank, sprawling over bushes like unraveled orange twine. This plant is known as dodder, but various folk names include devil guts and witches’ hair. It grows by drilling into a host plant and sucking out water and nutrients. Unlike symbiotic partnerships, parasitic interactions are one sided. One critter wins, the other loses out.
Once you reach the waterfall, take pictures, maybe stop for a snack and a drink of water, then reverse your steps. This is the end of the trail. Don’t climb the cliffs—the rocks are crumbly and will break off. Believe the signs! People get hurt here trying to climb. Enjoy the downhill hike back to the parking lot.
Escape summer heat by driving an hour up Angeles Crest Highway into the blue skies and green meadows of a mountain forest. Hike to a viewpoint or picnic under majestic pines.
Welcome to Los Angeles’s Big Sky Country—big skies, big trees, and big mountains. Angeles Crest—the collective name for the mountains between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert—offers campgrounds and picnic sites year-round, snow play in the winter, and a cool and green getaway in the summer.
Although much of the high country was burned in the 2009 arson-sparked Station Fire, Charlton Flats has recovered well. Stately trees and scampering chipmunks make the case that you don’t need to drive all the way to Yosemite for a quiet afternoon among the pines.
As you pull off Angeles Crest Highway and into the site, you have two choices for parking. If you want to do a good four-mile roundtrip hike, park in the lot closest to the entrance then head up the fire road to Vetter Lookout. To explore more casually, do short hikes, birdwatch, or to have a picnic, turn right and follow the access road to the locked gate, stopping wherever is most attractive.
The Vetter Peak hike mostly follows a paved road, and to stay on the main route, keep left at the forks. You’ll rise through forest to open brushy sections, until, at the summit, you can see in all directions. To the southwest, the mountain with the white domes and tall radio masts is Mount Wilson, home to a famous observatory and the transmission towers for many radio and TV stations. Go slowly because you’re nearly six thousand feet above sea level. Don’t be surprised if you huff and puff a bit.
The tall ponderosa, Jeffrey, and Coulter pines at Charlton Flats make it an excellent picnic ground. Be sure to get an up-close smell of the ponderosa’s bark—can you detect its signature butterscotch scent?
A Steller’s jay rocks his jaunty mohawk. Watch your unattended food while camping or picnicking—Steller’s are feisty and will grab what they can get!
If you’re not hiking Vetter Peak, turn your car right at the entrance and parallel the streambed, which is lined by willow and alder trees. This whole site was opened to the public in the 1930s. Facilities like toilets, parking pullouts, and picnic tables were installed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a program created as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Among the pines that tower over the stream, you’ll find western bluebirds, Steller’s jays, California scrub-jays, chickadees, brown creepers, and white-breasted nuthatches. Watch for the mountain-dwelling white-headed woodpecker, recognizable for its black body, all-white head, white wing patches, and in males, a little flick of red at the back of the head. Acorn woodpeckers are here too. In fact, nine different kinds of woodpeckers have been seen in and around the picnic grounds. In summer, listen for someone calling “Quick! Three beers!” That’s the olive-sided flycatcher calling from treetops and really sounding like a thirsty bar patron.
Botanists often lament that people ignore plants in favor of animals—they call this plant blindness. Let’s take a moment to honor the plants that feed the deer that mountain lions eat, the leaves that help caterpillars become butterflies, the flowers that make nectar for hummingbirds, and the forest that produces the oxygen we all breathe.
Plants have inventive ways to get pollinated. One method is to create nectar and bury it deep in a flower. To get at the sugar, an insect or bird has to stick its head all the way into the flower and get covered with pollen. As the pollinator travels from plant to plant, the pollen from one fertilizes the flowers of another.
Unfortunately for some plants, certain insects don’t always play by the rules. If a flower is too small, carpenter bees and honey bees have learned to perch at the base of the flower and chew a hole to get at the nectar. This is called nectar robbing—the bees get what they want but the flower doesn’t get pollinated.
For years after the Station Fire, poodle-dog bush, also called turricula, was abundant around Charlton Flats and other parts of Angeles Crest high country. It’s native to Southern California and Northern Baja, grows up to six feet tall, and has attractive purple flowers. It can also give you a terrible rash on par with poison oak (or worse). With time, it’s becoming less common—though it will probably rebound after the next big fire. As a general rule, stick to the trail and don’t handle unfamiliar plants, and all will be fine.
Other plants around Charlton Flats are much more pleasant. First, there’s the sugar pine, John Muir’s “king of the conifers,” which boasts the longest cones of any pine in the world (rarely less than a foot long). You’ll need both hands just to hold one. Coulter pines are here too. Watch for their hefty, barrel-shaped cones—large, hook-tipped, and big as a pineapple. You definitely want to avoid parking your car under these! The main pine in the picnic area is ponderosa—tall and straight, with bunches of long green needles that stay on the tree year-round. Look for colorful snow plants under the conifers in spring. They don’t get their energy through photosynthesis; instead, they parasitize fungi that form around conifer roots.
All the trees make this site great for watching western gray squirrels and Merriam’s chipmunks as they dart across fallen logs and spiral up tree trunks. Plus, there’s always the hope of seeing a black bear or some mule deer.
Keep an eye out for western gray squirrels, which you’re unlikely to see lower down in the LA Basin.
Just up the road is Chilao, a campground and picnic complex which has an open-on-weekends visitor center. If there’s a dripping spigot or some bird seed, that’s where all the birds will be. Higher up at Buckhorn Campground, even summer nights can be refreshingly chilly. It has a different set of trees and birds but a very narrow access road: don’t try to drive a large RV into Buckhorn.
For most people, a visit to Charlton Flats is an excellent mountain day trip. You can cool off, enjoy the piney air, and take goofy selfies with immense pinecones. Bring hand wipes, since some cones will have a sticky resin on them. If you have a bird book, bring that too. You may be lucky enough to find some mountain forest exclusives.
Take a ski lift to a subalpine habitat with epic views to the north and south. In summer and fall see bighorn sheep and chipmunks, in winter, hibernating ladybugs and a snowy wonderland.
Mount Baldy, or as it is officially known, Mount San Antonio, is the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, standing at a majestic 10,064 feet. Originally named for Saint Anthony of Padua, local settlers began to call it Baldy because of the bare bowl that dominates views from the city to the south. The nickname is so prevalent many locals don’t even recognize the name Mount San Antonio.
Mount Baldy makes a great day trip. In the summer or fall, you can hike alongside a mountain stream, or take a ski lift to explore a snow-free subalpine habitat. In the winter you can visit the snow to play, ski, or look for overwintering ladybugs. In spring, check out a waterfall or join in the local bighorn sheep count.
As you gain elevation on the journey up to Baldy Village, the scenery changes and the temperature drops—a welcome treat in the hot summer months. The rule of thumb for a sunny day is to subtract 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit for every 1,000 feet of elevation gain, though clouds, snow, or rain change the calculation. Keep an eye out for wildlife (and cyclists—this is a popular biking destination) on the drive, particularly if you’re traveling in early morning or at dusk. Animals often slink across the road, and you may see snakes, deer, coyotes, bobcats, or (if you’re incredibly lucky) a mountain lion, bear, or bighorn sheep. Storms are often intense here, so be sure to check the weather report. Even in the middle of summer, thunderstorms can be fierce.
According to rangers and village residents, you can often spot the bighorn sheep herd teetering on mountainsides above the trout pools or drinking at the creek below (see map). They can also sometimes be seen or heard from the ski lift parking lot. As males smash their horns together (each sporting a pair of horns that can weigh up to thirty pounds) trying to impress females, the sound echoes across the valley. When the sheep aren’t being so obvious, look for other telltale signs. Stand still and scan the surrounding canyon walls for movement or sound (the sheep sometimes dislodge loose rocks). Binoculars can be helpful—don’t leave them at home for this trip.
One guaranteed way to see a bighorn sheep on this trip is to look inside the Mount Baldy Visitor Center, though the sheep here are of the taxidermy variety. For up-to-the-minute sheep-spotting tips, stop in and talk to the ranger on duty. Take a moment to explore the displays. They depict the changes in plants and animals as you come up the mountain. A short trail around the center explores the area’s cultural history, from the Gabrieleño/Tongva people that moved seasonally up into the mountains during warm months, to miners that dug and panned for gold in the late 1800s.
Don’t miss the small pond out front, often inhabited by water striders—insects able to walk on water. They are very light and spread their weight out over their legs, allowing them to skate over the water without breaking its surface tension. In bright sunlight, look for the six shadowed dimples caused by each tiny foot.
The visitor center is also the place to purchase an Adventure Pass, which must be displayed while exploring the area, or a wilderness permit if you plan on hiking into the Cucamonga Wilderness.
Although signs warn motorists to limit their speed, only the luckiest visitors will get a glimpse of the resident black bears.
The ski lift runs year round and offers visitors a peaceful, one-mile, seventeen-minute scenic ride. As you glide up the mountain, enjoy stunning views of the scree (loose rock) and pine-covered slopes below. Peeking into the treetops offers a glimpse of birds going about their business from a vantage we rarely get.
The view gets better at the top. Follow a short trail to the ridgeline for spectacular vistas of both sides of the mountain. Got a Frisbee? There’s a disc golf course at the top. Ziplines too, if the ski lift wasn’t adventure enough for you. The trail to the summit is a grueling 6.5 miles round trip from here.
Be wary of the altitude. The top of the lift is at 7,800 feet, near the point when many people begin to feel the effects of altitude sickness. As elevation increases, air pressure decreases, making the air thinner. Thin air means fewer molecules in every breath you take, making it harder for you to get oxygen. People experiencing altitude sickness report headaches, nausea, dizziness, and loss of appetite. If you’re new to high-altitude adventures, take it easy and stay hydrated. Opt for the short hike to the ridgeline, then stop for a bite to eat at Top of the Notch Restaurant and Bar. If you feel a headache coming on, take the ski lift back down where the air has more oxygen!
Scared of heights, or sensitive to altitude? There’s a much shorter and easier hike further down the mountain. The trail is only 0.6 miles from the parking area and leads to the seventy-five-foot San Antonio Falls. Be warned that in the middle of summer, the falls may be dry or offer only the most meager of trickles. If spring-fed mountain water is a must-see for your group, take the Icehouse Canyon trail, which follows a burbling mountain creek as it cascades from one rocky pool to the next. Even in the driest months, the stream flows and has a nice chill to it if you put your hands or feet in.
Icehouse Canyon trail travels 3.5 miles up to Icehouse Saddle, with about 2,500 feet elevation gain. To avoid snow, plan this hike between June and October. At about the two-mile marker, you’ll reach the Cucamonga Wilderness area, beyond which a wilderness permit is required. Many groups decide to hike only the first half mile or mile of the trail, which is great for children or beginners.
A year-round creek follows the Icehouse Canyon trail. In the hottest of summers, it will be a mere trickle connecting deeper pools, and in the winter months parts of it freeze.
The best place in Los Angeles to see bald eagles, this large park also offers boating, trail riding, an inland beach, and hiking.
Sometimes called Puddingstone Reservoir (after the big lake in the middle of it), Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park is named for a long-serving county supervisor and seems to cover every recreation possibility. Birders know this is a reliable place to look for bald eagles, white pelicans, five kinds of heron and egret, year-round ducks and coots, gulls and terns, and even a chaparral species, the greater roadrunner, that’s tricky to find anyplace else in the region. There’s mountain biking (the park was selected as the mountain biking event site for the 2028 Olympics!) and horseback riding, kayak and bike rentals, a campground, and even a golf course. Fishing is popular but check the county’s Parks and Recreation website for health advisories about what not to eat (parks.lacounty.gov). Guided bird walks help beginners learn; check the same website for schedules.
Roadrunners are part of the cuckoo family. They’re fast enough to run down delicious lizards and small snakes, birds, or mammals for food.
Two fish-loving birds of prey can be seen at Bonelli, especially in winter. One is the osprey, the long-winged, white-and-black fish snatcher that’s easy to identify thanks to its black bandit mask. The second is the bald eagle, larger than an osprey, with a dark body and (in adults) a white head and bright yellow hooked bill. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and one will nab a fish right in front of you. While bald eagles and ospreys can be seen in summer, they are more common from November to April.
Great horned owls live in the park year-round, as do red-tailed hawks, usually seen circling on currents of warm air, their broad wings and cinnamon-red tail helping show us what they are. Once the air warms up, turkey vultures appear, patrolling the open country for carrion.
These raptors (birds of prey) are a good indication of the size of the park and the mix of habitats. Lots of predators means there’s enough prey for them to eat. Cooper’s hawks also are common, with year-round resident mourning doves, starlings, robins, and bluebirds all on their menu.
Five kinds of herons and egrets live here: snowy and great egrets, the great blue heron, the green heron, and the black-crowned night heron, which is often hunched over with its neck pulled down into its shoulders, like a grumpy person waiting in the rain.
Most of these birds are patient hunters, standing still or walking very slowly watching for prey, then grabbing it with a sudden jolt of the neck and bill. Snowy egrets are more active, often foot-paddling to stir up prey and sometimes running and lunging after escaping food.
Bonelli has a lot of prickly pear cactus, and you may notice many cactus pads are covered with fluffy white fuzz. It sometimes looks like barnacles on a whale’s tale. This fuzz covers a small insect called the cochineal scale. When it is dried, crushed, and mixed with fixatives, it produces an astoundingly bright, permanent red dye—a secret the Aztecs knew and the Spanish conquistadors promptly stole.
Cochineal from Mexico became a very valuable export. In Europe, almost as soon as it was discovered, it was used to dye many things deep red, from cardinals’ robes to British Redcoat uniforms. The Spanish empire was built on three things: gold, silver, and cochineal. Artisan weavers and dyers still use it today, even though synthetic replacements are used in most commercial products.
Cochineal is found all over Los Angeles, not just at Bonelli Park, but once you learn to spot the infestations here, you can watch for them on other hikes (like along the LA River on Trip 10). If you do find some, take the tip of your pocket knife and crush a small piece of the white crust against the side of the cactus to see the intense magenta color. Just don’t wipe your knife on your clothes or you’ll have a stain that might not come out in the wash.
This site has so many options that where to start is a matter of personal preference. You can circle the whole lake if you want, though most people do an out-and-back route. The lake was formed by a dam built in 1928 to control the mudslides that periodically roar out of the nearby San Gabriel Mountains. Today, the shoreline’s willows, pines, open grassy spots, and marshy areas are home to many kinds of birds. For your first visit, come in from the west entrance by the 57 Freeway and go straight to the far side of the lake, parking near the East Shore. From there you can walk north and east around the lake to the RV park, a path with good birdwatching. When done, come back the way you came.
Willow forests and well-marked, accessible nature trails provide a window into Los Angeles’s past, as does an old-school nature center—the first home of the LA Audubon Society.
Look closer at the blooming invasive mustard, and you may find it dotted with thousands of ladybugs.
The San Gabriel Valley today has so many roads and houses it’s hard to imagine anything natural survives. Yet survive it does, and Whittier Narrows helps prove it. Here, you can focus on getting your 10,000 steps or relax and explore each pond or cluster of flowers as you come upon them. The Whittier Narrows Nature Center has animal ambassadors to educate children. Birders check for migrants and rare arrivals, like the yellow-billed cuckoo that turned up one summer. And there’s easy access to the San Gabriel River, where you can join a bike path that runs thiry-eight miles from the Santa Fe Dam to the Pacific Ocean at Seal Beach (coming out near Trip 22, the sea turtle site).
Whittier Narrows can refer to many things. On the geological level, it marks a “choke point” or “water gap” where the San Gabriel River forces its way between the Puente Hills to the east and Montebello Hills to the west, exiting the southern boundary of the San Gabriel Valley for the broad plain of the LA Basin. Historically, during winter storms, an unstoppable blast of brown water and screaming boulders rushed into the LA Basin. Where the 60 and 605 freeways now cross was once a flood zone too wild to build in. One hundred years ago even below-the-5 towns like Downey and Norwalk could be completely underwater during floods.
Dams and channelization changed all that. Protected from winter floods, farms, towns, and small cities grew. Yet this tangle of freeways and roads, parks, lakes, trails, power line rights-of-way, and sewage treatment plant outflows all combine to create a mosaic of wetland and upland habitat.
For naturalists, Whittier Narrows refers to a sequence of parks north and south of Durfee Avenue, between Rosemead Boulevard and the San Gabriel River. Habitats here include Legg Lake, where you might see a loon in winter or hear the witchy-witchy call of a common yellowthroat, and the maze of nature trails and paths on the other side of Durfee, heading west from the nature center along the levee.
The slow-moving water upstream of this weir dam is frequented by osprey, herons, egrets, and turtles.
Phainopepla love mistletoe berries, and mistletoes love them right back—after eating lots of berries, the birds poop out the seeds, helping mistletoe to spread.
To visit, just park at the nature center and start walking. How green or brown it looks depends on how much rain there has been, but no matter which path you take, you’ll find something delightful. It might be something common, like a red-eared slider turtle in the riverbed or a western fence lizard doing push-ups. It might be ladybugs in the mustard plants or a heron perched in the top of a tree. Or perhaps you’ll see the phainopepla (“fay-no-PEP-la”), a desert and foothill bird whose name means “shining robe” in reference to the males’ glossy black feathers. They sport a jaunty mohawk and intense red eyes. When they fly, white wing patches flash like small sunbursts.
None of the excursions covered in this book will stay exactly the same year after year. Trails erode and get rebuilt; fires clear one vegetation regime and encourage another; funding priorities shift, closing one site while another opens. What is the future of the Whittier Narrows? A large discovery center has been in development for a while, one whose footprint would overlap with the present nature trails, but its future is unclear.
Whatever does or doesn’t get built, out in the brush, along the Rio Hondo and San Gabriel Rivers, around Legg Lake and the small oasis near the current nature center, the California towhees and white-crowned sparrows will still hop and scratch, looking for seeds and carrying on as they always do. Swallows will soar and loop, gobbling up insects. A “discovery center” is a good idea, but the ultimate place to discover nature is nature itself.
Powder Canyon A delightful island of habitat with a rich network of trails, large native oak trees, and (in winter) killer city views—popular with walkers, mountain bikers, and equestrians.
This island of habitat parallels the 60 Freeway between the 605 and Diamond Bar. The steep ridges and shady valleys offer a chance to experience oaks, rare Southern California black walnuts, chaparral plants, and open, grassy hillsides.
Watch for mule deer here, red-tailed hawks, or maybe even the paw prints of a bobcat or mountain lion. The grassy slopes of Puente Hills are dotted with California ground squirrel burrows. This helps make it excellent snake habitat. Lucky hikers might see several rattlesnakes in a single morning, especially in the spring. Other times there seem to be none at all.
Cheek pouches bulging, this California ground squirrel wonders if it can fit in just one more acorn.
Start at the Powder Canyon Trailhead off of Fullerton Road. Check the kiosk for trail maps. If there aren’t any maps left, just take a picture of the big map on the signboard with your smartphone. Trails here are well-marked, and you’ll want to mix-and-match your loops to get just the right distance for you and your party.
No matter which way you want to go, everybody starts on the same entrance path. Almost immediately after leaving the trailhead you find yourself inside the shady canopy of oak and walnut trees. Both have dark brown trunks, but the walnuts are deciduous, dropping their leaves in winter, while these oaks keep leaves year-round. The oak leaves are dark green and smaller than a quarter, with sharp points and often curled up like saucers rather than flat. In contrast, a walnut tree’s leaves are greener, slimmer, longer, more like the shape of a fern or willow. In spring, the nuts appear, looking like small green apples, but they turn brown and even black later in the season. Nowadays, native walnut trees can be hard to find in Southern California, but Puente Hills is a great place to spot them.
No matter how tempting the shade looks, stay on the trails. This not only helps maintain habitat integrity but also protects you from poison oak. After the oak and walnut grove, skip the Gray Squirrel Trail, which just connects back to the road, and instead take the Black Walnut Trail, which will come up on the right and creates a longer loop.
You also can stay on the Powder Canyon Trail to reach the stables at Schabarum Park. If you do, pause by the stables to look at the trees. In a perfect line there’s a cottonwood tree, a pepper tree, a Mexican fan palm, and a coast live oak. It’s like a botany lesson for the blended treescapes of Los Angeles, all in one tidy row.
Morning hikers wanting a workout can crank their way up the Purple Sage Trail. All routes are popular, and if you’re not sure what connects to what, just ask somebody—on the weekends, there are always lots of people around.
As with so many LA parks, the Puente Hills are a steep island of undeveloped land rising out of the urban sea. Whenever you see hills sticking up like this, suspect an earthquake fault nearby, pushing and pulling the landscape like a baker kneading dough. The Puente Hills Fault made itself known with the Whittier Narrows Earthquake in 1987 (magnitude 5.9). Geologists call it a blind thrust fault because its presence was initially hidden beneath the surface; we now know it runs from Brea, northwest to downtown Los Angeles, and is yet another reason to have good earthquake insurance.
While hiking any of the trails here, study the hillsides. You’re not only watching for a snake or resting deer but also a glimpse of ledges and exposed reefs (long ridges of normally underground stone). As the tilted bedrock becomes visible through the soil and brush, it’s like having x-ray vision, letting you see the bones of the planet in action.
Many of the trails at Powder Canyon are multi-use and frequented by joggers, hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders.
More than on any of our other excursions, expect to share the trails here with a mix of users. At all hours of the day there could be mountain bikers, joggers, and horseback riders on any of the trails, so we all have to practice common trail etiquette. Mountain bikers should know to give a shout or a tinkle of a bell to alert you when they’re coming up from behind. Leave them room to get by and don’t cross into the center of the trail unexpectedly.
Horses should always receive right of way from hikers and mountain bikers. Stand on the downhill side of the trail and wait for the horse to pass. Be friendly, use common sense, share the road—the same advice applies to hiking in popular areas as it does to living a generally good life.
Two miles of winding trails, a stream, a nature center on an island, and two lakes filled with turtles bring some wilderness to the middle of Long Beach.
Surrounded by suburbia, the San Gabriel River, and the 605 Freeway, El Dorado Nature Center is a 105-acre oasis in the heart of Long Beach. As soon as you step through the tall wooden gates, it feels as though you’ve left the city. This is a place where trees and waterfowl are more common than cars and buildings, where you walk on the Earth instead of concrete, and where the hum of electrical wires is drowned out by rustling leaves.
The nature center is on an island in the middle of a lake and reached by crossing a wooden bridge. Inside, exhibits focus on the people, plants, and animals that call the area home. Outside, there’s a porch with benches, hummingbird feeders, and great views of the north lake. For a closer look at wildlife on the water, gaze through the viewing scope. Heed the signs’ warning: “Attention squirrels, human food can harm you.” Don’t let them trick you into feeding them. Use the restrooms, fill up your water bottles at the drinking fountains, and pick up a trail brochure before starting your hike.
El Dorado Park used to be part of the San Gabriel River floodplain and was covered with willows, cottonwood trees, and other riparian plants. Not long after Spanish explorers arrived, a number of Mexican land grants were issued for Rancho Los Alamitos, Los Cerritos, and Los Coyotes. Agriculture and livestock were big parts of early settlers’ lives. Rancho Los Cerritos held 15,000 head of cattle, 7,000 sheep, and 3,000 horses. As human and livestock populations grew, native vegetation diminished. The nature center sits in an area once covered by bean fields.
In the 1960s, the local community came together to create a park. The center was constructed in 1969 as part of the larger El Dorado park system, which includes an archery range, golf course, tennis center, basketball courts, picnic areas, and fishing lakes. Soil excavated from the 605 Freeway construction was used to create hills and mounds for two miles of nature trails that wind past understory (ground level) vegetation and beneath an oak- and willow-tree canopy, hinting at the floodplain forest that used to line parts of the nearby San Gabriel River.
With a creek and two lakes, there are lots of banks and water edges to explore. Fishing isn’t allowed, but look closely at still waters for bluegill and largemouth bass. There are also many colorful koi carp that might have been pets at some point. Canada geese breed in these lakes too. Look for their fluffy goslings in spring.
Although you can’t catch the fish, plenty of birds do. You might see a great egret standing sentinel in the shallows, waiting for a fish to come within reach of its spearing beak. Or if you’re lucky you’ll spot a pelican swallowing a fish whole.
Pelicans are showstoppers. Both brown and American white pelicans have been recorded here, usually in the fall and winter. These large, impressive birds are easy to identify because of their long necks and big bills with the fleshy undercarriage of their expandable throat pouch. To hunt, pelicans fly over water looking for fish. When they spot one, they dive in, twisting their necks against their body to protect their spines, then opening their bills wide to catch the fish. After resurfacing, before they can swallow the fish, they must drain their pouch of all the extra water. At this moment the pelican can lose its hard-won meal—sometimes the fish jumps out, and sometimes gulls or other birds swoop in and steal the fish right from the pelican’s throat!
To hide from predatory birds like pelicans and egrets, fish and other prey often take to the shallows where various shore plants provide cover. The spiky-looking plant with umbrella-like leaves lining the water’s edge might look like grass, but it’s actually an umbrella sedge. Get close and touch the stems to feel their edges. Unlike grasses, which have round stems, if you were to cut a sedge stem in half you’d find a triangular cross section. The most well-known sedge in the world is papyrus, the plant ancient Egyptians used to make paper.
Also growing in the shallows or in the wet-soil along the water’s edge is yerba mansa. It blooms each spring with showy white flowers that form a cone surrounded by white bracts (bracts look like petals, but they’re actually modified leaves). Dried yerba mansa has been used as a treatment for inflammation—from swollen gums and sore throats, to athlete’s foot and diaper rash.
As soon as you walk over the first bridge, look for the floating docks. On most days turtles sun themselves on these platforms. The most common turtles seen here are red-eared sliders, but you’ll also find soft-shelled turtles, map turtles, and other non-native species common in the LA area. These are escaped or released pets, or their offspring. You may even spot the occasional native western pond turtle.
Hundreds of mostly non-native turtles live in the lakes and clamber out on warm days to bask on the floating docks. Here a western pond turtle basks atop a red-eared slider, while a yellow-bellied slider looks off to the right.
If you visit in the fall, keep a look out for the spectacular webs made by orb weaver spiders. Many species of spiders call the nature center home year-round, but they aren’t always easy to find—preferring to hide under leaf litter or tree bark, or in rolled-up leaves. In contrast, orb weavers build their beautiful webs at eye level or higher. The park is a perfect habitat for them, and you can find lots of them in the fall. Small insects breed in the lakes, then hatch to fly through the air, collide with spider webs, and become spider food. The most common species of orb weaver in the park is Neoscona crucifera, also known as the spotted orb weaver or barn spider. It’s about the size and color of a peanut, with a cross pattern on its back. Marvel at it from a distance, and imagine how much time it took to build that intricate web.
There are three trail options for visitors of all sizes and abilities. A short, quarter-mile trail is ADA accessible and offers handrails for anyone needing support. A longer, one-mile trail winds through shaded woody areas and crisscrosses over the stream multiple times with bridges at each crossing. The longest trail is two miles and leads all the way to the south lake on the other side of the park.
An endangered (and usually tropical) sea turtle lives in Long Beach. Try to spot one—and count the leaping fish and herons while you wait.
Ready for that sea turtle experience you thought you had to go to Hawaii to have? One of only two known groups of green sea turtles in California swims in the lower San Gabriel River (the other is in San Diego Bay). They’ve been spotted in the river since at least the 1970s. They don’t nest here—that probably takes place on islands and beaches in Mexico—but they do spend a lot of time enjoying the warm water from the power plants and nearby shallow salt marshes.
Park near the beach and follow the San Gabriel River bike path upstream to the power plants. The turtles are big fans of the Jacuzzi-like conditions of this part of the river, and the platforms by the power plants are the best place to look for them.
While sea turtles can be seen anywhere in Alamitos Bay, the most reliable place to spot them is in the San Gabriel River, upstream of the Second Street crossing. Unfortunately there is often a lot of trash in the river, and you may get tricked a few times before you see your first sea turtle head break the surface. Be patient though, and you will very likely be rewarded.
Green sea turtles can grow to three feet across and weigh over five hundred pounds. Some will be smaller, and all can be tricky to find at first. Watch for their round heads poking out of the water when they come up for air. The head may look as small as a tennis ball or as big as a grapefruit. If you take a picture, don’t forget to add it to the RASCals project on iNaturalist or email it to rascals@nhm.org.
You’ll spot the turtles’ heads first, but with practice, you can make out their flippers and saucer-shaped shells while they’re still below the surface.
Turtles haven’t always lived here. Ocean temperatures were too cold for them in Southern California during the last glacial period when humans first settled the area, but the ocean has warmed. Because no group of green sea turtles along the Pacific Coast is found any farther north, we can assume this water is about as cold as they can tolerate. We also know sea turtle remains, common in archaeological digs further south, are very rare in local excavations of Native American settlements. Whether the turtles arrived one hundred or five hundred years ago is up for debate, but in ecological terms, they’re new to the scene.
Turtles were probably using the wetlands before this area became developed, but the power plants along the river, built in the mid-1960s to provide electricity for Los Angeles, encourage them to stay in this narrow stretch. The generators are cooled with water pumped in from the ocean, which, once it has absorbed the heat, is then pumped out into the river. Turtles are cold-blooded—the scientific term is ectothermic—meaning they get body warmth from their environment. The warm water here is comfortable for them, and it encourages the growth of plants they like to eat.
The turtles congregate at the power plants because of the warm water pumps. But the power plants are being upgraded now, and in coming years, they will probably be converted to air-cooled (instead of water-cooled) systems. Will the sea turtles still gather at the river?
Probably. When power plants in San Diego Bay were upgraded, the turtles stayed. They just spread out more. The shallow, slow-moving water of our Alamitos Bay and Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge is still warmer than other water along the coast. If the power plants change up, turtles are likely to stay in the general area, but they will be a bit harder to find.
The river here is a blend of water coming from two directions. Fresh water flows down the San Gabriel River, combining snowmelt, rain runoff, treated discharge from sewage plants, and flow from natural springs. When it meets the ocean, the mix of fresh and salt water is called brackish. Many species like this mix, and it offers lots to look for while you scan the river for turtle heads.
Striped mullet is a silver fish the size and shape of a small salmon. Normally it mucks around the river bottom, eating bits of dead plants and small animals called zooplankton, but you’ll periodically see them leaping and splashing out of the water. Scientists aren’t entirely sure, but they think the fish do this to grab extra oxygen from the air.
With luck, you may spot sea lions in the river too, and up to twenty kinds of water birds, from the stately great blue heron to fast-flying terns and black, snake-necked cormorants.
Double-crested cormorants stand stoically on power lines crisscrossing the river. When they see a tasty fish, they’re off like a rocket.
This land is always changing. Historically, water in the lower San Gabriel River slowed down and spread out as it approached the coast, expanding into the Los Cerritos Wetlands. High flows from winter rains spread out along the flat parts of Seal Beach and Long Beach, creating pools, marshes, and salt flats. As the water evaporated in summer, the soil would be caked with salt, allowing only certain plants to survive.
Then came the hallmarks of a growing Los Angeles—first grazing animals, then farms, and finally urban development. To provide security from the frequent floods, the channel was deepened and lined with concrete to contain the river.
Today, we value open space differently, and we recognize the importance of tidal marshes for animals—fish incubate and migrating birds eat here. Community-based efforts have secured land on both sides of the river and there are active efforts to restore portions of the Los Cerritos Wetlands. Just like a hundred years ago, the land is in flux. Each year you come back, it may look a little different.
Saltwater meets fresh at this soft-bottomed section of the LA River. Come for birds and more birds—especially during fall migration.
The last stretch of the LA River in Long Beach offers a different experience from Frogtown and Sepulveda Basin (Trips 3 and 10), because it’s more heavily influenced by tides and has a different mix of bird species. After bending around downtown LA, the river is confined to concrete all the way to Willow Street. Here salt and fresh water create a brackish mix over a soft-bottom. This habitat is sometimes called estuarine, from the word estuary, which is a tidal lagoon.
During the fall migration, ten thousand or more shorebirds stop over. Introduced birds like red bishops and scaly-breasted munias (also called nutmeg mannikins) mix with natives for a typical SoCal blend of east meets west.
Your first visit to the river may seem strange—as you turn in from Willow Street to park, you’re under a row of Peruvian pepper trees on a block of nice homes—it doesn’t seem like a nature reserve at all. Where’s the water? This neighborhood is protected from flooding (everybody hopes) by the tall levee between the houses and the 710 Freeway. You’ll find the river by hiking up the levee’s diagonal ramp to the channel on the other side.
Willow Street marks the divide: concrete above, vegetation and mudflats below. But a quirk of design makes the concrete a more hospitable rest stop for migrating birds than you might think. This stretch of channel boasts a narrow chute down the center. It ranges from 12–20 feet across, about the size of a car lane, and was designed to send water rapidly out to sea while the wider main channel stood available to gather heavy floodwaters when necessary. As Los Angeles grew, more water flowed through the chute than expected. Today, a small bit of water overflows and spreads out across the flat riverbed. Just a few inches deep, the water warms in the sun and creates a great place for algae mats to grow. The algae attracts snails and insects, which in turn provide a tasty buffet for migrating birds.
Serious birdwatchers travel upstream to Del Amo Boulevard or beyond, hoping to find out-of-range shorebirds that will add gold stars to their life lists. The hardest of hardcore birders survey thousands of small sandpipers, sometimes called peeps, feather by feather, looking for subtle differences.
Most people will be more interested in the river south of the access ramp, where you can bike or walk all the way to the Port of Long Beach. Water levels change and storms deposit sandbars different places each season, but there will almost always be a great mix of ducks, herons, and waders starting right at the access ramp.
Mid-winter and late summer are the most reliable times to observe thirty species in thirty minutes, but any month offers at least half a dozen species. As you go downstream, brown pelicans indicate where the river meets the ocean. The concrete sides give way to sharp, jumbled stone called riprap, which protects against erosion. From here out, the water gets increasingly salty.
In the willows and weedy grass, you may spot northern red bishops, a stout-billed mega sparrow with a closet full of crazy patterns. Females and non-breeding males are yellowish and black-streaked, like any of the dozen sparrows in your bird book. But breeding males turn on the open-for-business sign full force, with a blazing red-and-black full-body pattern visible from a distance.
American avocets also change color with the seasons. Their heads are gray in winter but in spring and summer turn a warm cinnamon orange. Avocets feed in shallow water by sweeping their bill side to side. In deeper water, cormorants chase down fish. You’ll see them perched near the water with their wings spread towards sun (or into a light wind) to help them dry faster.
How do so many species of shorebird share the same area without fighting over food? Each species has a different bill—straight or curved, long or short—depending on their target food. Some beaks are good for hunting deeper things (like a buried clam), while others are better suited for finding insect larvae, shallow-water fish, or baby crabs. No single species is good at finding all possible prey, but each is an expert on a portion. Ecologists call this “resource partitioning.” Taken as a whole, the bills in a shorebird community represent a set of Swiss army knife tools.
At the lower LA River, bikers can get 35+ miles for their tires, and birders can get 215+ species of birds for their life lists.
Historically this section of the LA River would have been comprised of meandering channels, willow and cottonwood forests, deep pools and shady glens, wet marshes and dryer, seasonally flooded sections. Arroyo and white willows grew in luxurious thickets and forests, hence the modern town Willowbrook, and Willow Avenue.
Willows are still found in the river south of the bridge despite the densely populated neighborhoods. Between the 405 Freeway and the ocean at Long Beach, multiple pocket parks create space for sycamores and coastal sage, and therefore for warblers and flycatchers. Pocket parks offer great benefits for relatively low cost—once created, even the smallest pieces of open space generate an uptick in physical activity among local (human) residents, not to mention the benefit for wildlife.
Most visitors have one goal in mind. Birders come to bird; bikers come to bike. But there’s great pleasure in combining goals. Riders cranking out a serious workout can still notice and appreciate avocets, stilts, and ospreys. Surprises await us on each trip, from a rock wren in the riprap to half a dozen butterflies species.
If you see somebody standing beside a telescope, jumping up and down like a giddy lunatic, have a stroll over and ask what’s been spotted. You may have turned up just in time to celebrate the first North American record of a wandering Siberian shorebird. If it’s going to happen anywhere in Los Angeles, it’ll probably be here.
Ducks, geese, squirrels, and migrant birds gather around two small lakes. A fitness trail helps with New Year’s exercise resolutions.
Basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson works his magic as a businessman, philanthropist, AIDS-awareness spokesman, and co-owner of the Dodgers, Sparks, and Los Angeles Football Club. His magic extends to the park that bears his name, an oasis of calm, water, and nature in the heart of South Los Angeles.
As soon as you step out of your car, especially if it’s early on a weekday, begin listening. The park will be alive with the chirps of warblers, the honks of geese, and the chittering calls of dozens of small birds too active and vroomy to stick a name on. The yellow-bellied, gray-headed flycatcher that’s calling kweer, kweer on a winter morning is the lively and social Cassin’s kingbird; look for it grabbing moths from trees around the lake. The long-tailed, all-black birds that whistle and gargle are grackles, a new arrival in California. They look like crows who dressed for prom while a bit tipsy and put on one tail too many. This Mexican and Central American bird follows quickly on the heels of urban and agricultural development, and its range continues to expand north and westward.
A small palm-covered island in the middle of the fishing lake is a valuable retreat for many of the park’s birds.
Most people walk the paths around the two lakes, knowing that a little exercise gets the body and mind energized. It can be hard work, living in the city. Spending time in nature can help lower blood pressure and anxiety. If you want a pleasant, low-stress way to start your exercise routine, this park is a lovely place to begin. It’s impossible to get lost here, there’s no entrance fee or membership card, it has many parking lots and restrooms, and if you bring binoculars, you just might spot a rare bird.
The park lakes are full of ducks. Some have arrived on their own, and others are abandoned domestic ducks. Mallards have been domesticated by people for thousands of years, and many of the big white ducks in the park had mallard ancestors. The ones with bumpy red faces are called Muscovy ducks and are originally from Mexico. Mid-winter brings other, wilder species to the park, including the American wigeon. It has a pale blue bill, blond forehead, speckled chin, and bright, iridescent green stripe blazing backwards from the middle of its face and down the side of its neck. Nothing else in the park looks like it.
It’s worth studying the seagulls, since this can be a good inland site to compare large, gray-backed western gulls to the paler, slim-billed California and ring-billed gulls. You’ll find American coots at the water’s edge. Look for their specialized lobed feet, more useful on muddy ground than fully webbed feet. They’re easy to see near the south lake, at least until somebody starts feeding the ducks popcorn—then everything becomes a flurry of feathers and squawks in a feeding-frenzy madness.
Though we discourage feeding wildlife here or anywhere else, not everybody gets the memo. Previous encounters with handouts from people have made the eastern fox squirrels here bold and curious. Up close, you can admire the subtle ways their reddish undercoat glows beneath gray outer hairs. Once you can identify this color palette, you’ll recognize the species in other areas where it may overlap with western gray squirrels or California ground squirrels.
Black phoebes are also common in this park. Look for them perched on branches and fence posts. Though there may be several across the park, you’ll probably only see one at a time, perhaps wagging its tail up and down. Yellow-rumped warblers, ruby-crowned kinglets, and white-crowned sparrows are common, winter-only birds. Their names tell you how to identify them.
The park quiets down in summer. Still, there are usually a few gulls present, some geese that decided to stay in town and not bother with flying back to Canada, and some grackles, house sparrows, and starlings. As you do your walk around the lakes, watch for small things too, like ladybugs and honey bees. Look down as often as you look up. As naturalist Henry David Thoreau once said, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
An interpretive center, lighthouse, miles of trails along coastal bluffs, and an annual gray whale migration. The Palos Verdes Peninsula boasts a unique nature experience.
As you drive or take the bus to Point Vicente, you’ll be wowed by views of the Pacific Ocean. The road along the Palos Verdes Peninsula coast is one of Southern California’s most scenic. On a clear day you can see Catalina Island twenty miles out to sea! Even though the peninsula is firmly attached to the mainland, it’s sometimes called the ninth Channel Island because it first emerged from the ocean floor a few million years ago and has been an island, off and on, since then as sea levels fluctuated. The peninsula and the islands share plant and animal species that exist nowhere else on the mainland.
The Point Vicente Interpretive Center can be your jumping off point for exploring the entire Palos Verdes Peninsula, or it can be the main attraction. The center has free parking and, as soon as you pull into the lot, stunning ocean views. There are plenty of picnic benches in the grassy areas around the center, and inside there are restrooms, drinking fountains, a gift shop, exhibits, and the fossilized remains of a giant mako shark. December through May is whale migration season. Stop inside and borrow a pair of binoculars to see the whales chugging by.
Today people capture images of whales with binoculars and cameras, but in the past this was a place for another sort of capture. Whale hunting used to be a worldwide activity, because the animals provided raw materials for daily life. Spermaceti (the semi-solid crystalline wax found in the head cavity of sperm whales) was used for candles, and baleen (the filter feeding device made of keratin in some whales’ mouths) was used to make all manner of objects from backscratchers to corsets. Gray whales were hunted primarily for lamp oil, which helped illuminate the wealthier houses in Los Angeles.
Starting in the mid-1930s, international and then federal agencies banned the commercial harvest of gray whales. Thanks to conservation efforts, the eastern Pacific population has rebounded from 2,000 to between 20,000 and 22,000 individuals living on the West Coast and making their annual migration from feeding grounds in Alaska to breeding grounds in Baja California.
Point Vicente is ideal for watching gray whales on their long journeys. They begin their southward trip in December and pass by the center at the rate of about fifteen a day in January. As March rolls around, an average of twenty-four whales a day can be seen heading back from Mexico, including newly born calves. These young whales and their mothers usually stick close to shore, where shallower water makes it harder for predators to sneak up on them. The calves’ presence means this is also prime time for spotting orcas (also called killer whales, even though they’re actually dolphins). Orcas work together to hunt gray whale calves, a favorite food.
The buildings surrounding the lighthouse support its operations. One houses a large foghorn that automatically turns on when visibility drops below three miles.
Imagine being a plant on a coastal bluff. You’re happy because the ocean helps keep you cool in summer and warm in winter. But there are tradeoffs. The wind can be fierce, so you need strong roots to keep you in place. If you’re a small plant, being low to the ground helps too. When it’s hot, the wind can dry you out, so you develop waxy coverings for your leaves. Added bonus: the waxy covering also protects you from salty sea spray. Thanks to the unique challenges of survival, some plants found on the peninsula grow nowhere else on the mainland.
Take the island green dudleya, a type of cliff-adapted succulent. Unlike your garden-variety succulents that can live almost anywhere, this plant grows on Palos Verde sea cliffs, on two of the Channel Islands, and nowhere else in the entire world.
Point Vicente is the most southwestern part of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, with dangerous rocky shoals (areas where the ocean floor rises close to the surface) in the surrounding waters. Shipwrecks were common. In 1926, after shipmasters petitioned the federal government, the Point Vicente Lighthouse was constructed, immediately becoming the brightest light on the Southern California coastline.
The steep cliffs here, so useful for lighthouses, also attract peregrine falcons, which nest on this section of coast. They vary their usual diet of pigeons and feast on seabirds as well. You can see them waiting on a ledge or flying past—maybe at one hundred miles per hour.
In summer, explore the native plant garden and trails behind the center. Some of the pollinators visiting flowers around here are rare butterflies like the Palos Verdes and El Segundo blue. As caterpillars, both species feed on only one or two types of plants that grow in a very limited area. Both are on the endangered species list, and efforts by local conservation groups are helping protect their remaining habitat and cultivate their host plants.
