Questioning Expertise of Sightings May Be for the Birds

My fellow birder Henry E. Childs Jr., the birdman of Upland, has published a book, “Where Birders Go in Southern California” (Los Angeles Audubon Society) that should be useful to birders who don’t know where to go to see birds.

Of course there are 350 species of birds in Southern California (500 if you really look hard), and one can see many without seeking out the best habitats. We even have ravens among the skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles.

Dr. Childs has a doctorate in zoology from UC Berkeley, and is emeritus professor of biology at Chaffey College in Alta Loma. He has been a birder for nearly 55 years.

Dr. Childs and I are friends, despite one or two collisions caused by our different degrees of erudition. I concede that Dr. Childs in an authority, whereas I am just an amateur. Nevertheless, I stand my ground on certain points.

Dr. Childs, for one thing, has always been skeptical of my report of sighting a common grackle in my back yard on Mt. Washington. It is true that after I published that report I was informed by the Audubon Society that no grackle had ever been sighted west of the Mississippi River (as I recalled just the other day). I observed that if indeed there were grackles on the other side of the Mississippi, what was to keep one from flying across it and coming on out to Los Angeles? The society was not persuaded.

In the copy of his book that Dr. Childs sent to me he has marked the great- tailed grackle in the index, noting that it can be sighted in Imperial, Inyo and San Bernardino counties. That is his only concession; but of course it is meaningless since the great- or boat-tailed grackle is another animal altogether.

Dr. Childs does note, in his listing of birding locations in the Pasadena area, that Descanso Gardens, in La Canada Flintridge, is the “site of the famous Jack Smith Bird Walk in December. (The second Sunday of December, at 8 a.m.)” He might have noted that the birdwalk was named after me as a direct result of my grackle sighting. (By the way, the bird walk is now known as the Jack and Denise Smith Bird Walk, since my wife has never failed to accompany me on that arduous outing.)

He lists both blue jays and scrub jays, without reference to my insistence that the scrub jay is blue, and it is undoubtedly a jay, so by rights it should be called a blue jay. Dr. Childs and I have contested this point several times in public, but of course, because of his greater academic standing, he usually prevails.

I am most surprised that I do not find San Juan Capistrano in the index. For years, as you know, San Juan Capistrano has celebrated the return of the swallows on March 19. This annual migration has become an epic event that attracts thousands of curious visitors to the mission city.

Dr. Childs can hardly conceal his frustration over civic exploitation of what he considers a fraud. The migrations of swallows take place over several weeks, he maintains, and thousands of them are back in their old haunts well before March 19. He is not, however, as successful in exorcising this myth as he has been in preserving the name scrub jay.

Dr. Childs lists several good birding locations in the central Los Angeles area, showing that you don’t need to go to rural areas to find birds. In Olvera Street, for example, one may see feral ringed turtle-doves in the olive trees near the north end; chimney swifts may be seen at Forest Lawn Hollywood at dusk in summer; the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens harbors such species as the red-whiskered bulbul, orioles, tanagers, warblers, flycatchers and sparrows.

(By the way, birders are advised to carry a standard field guide when visiting the locations listed by Dr. Childs, since his bird list is not alphabetized, and birds are grouped under family names, which are Greek to most of us.)

I hope my petty complaints will not keep birders from obtaining this book. Dr. Childs gives some good tips on birding. “Wear dark clothing, including your hat. Birds have the best color vision of any living creatures. They see or hear you and take evasive action before you see them . . . Be stealthy, quiet. Avoid thrashing about. The quiet observer sees more . . . Stay on established pathways. Damage to the habitat affects all species in the ecosystem.

“When possible,” he concludes, “prior to reporting a rare or unusual sighting, have another birder of better or equal ability locate and verify your identification.”

I don’t know whether Dr. Childs wrote that with my grackle sighting in mind, but I could hardly have had the sighting verified by another birder of better or equal ability. The only other person around was my wife, and she doesn’t know a grackle from a black-headed grosbeak.

Neither do I, for that matter.