BIRDS

This mountain car parking zone is a scorching spot for migrating birds

The San Gabriel Mountains loom like an impregnable fortress for tens of millions of migrating birds making their lengthy and threatening journey to distant breeding grounds within the far north.

However scientists lately found that many of those spring migrants use a surprisingly unassuming technique to recover from the peaks: They fly extraordinarily low over a mud car parking zone wedged between steep slopes on the western finish of the vary.

There is no such thing as a easy reply to the phenomenon within the space referred to as Bear Divide, which has change into a scorching spot for avian analysis initiatives, about 30 miles north of Los Angeles.

On a latest weekday, a dozen biologists armed with nets, calipers and notebooks gathered earlier than dawn on the Angeles Nationwide Forest website to take a full accounting of certainly one of California’s nice wildlife spectacles.

On the first rays of sunshine, the silence was damaged by lots of of colourful birds pouring by way of one of many solely locations within the state the place migrating birds fly throughout daylight, just some yards off the bottom.

A bird is caught in a net

A Nashville warbler is caught in a internet at Bear Divide within the San Gabriel Mountains.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)

“Right here they arrive,” mentioned Tania Romero, a biology scholar at Cal State Los Angeles, as a small yellow-and-black hen all of a sudden stopped in midair, entangled in a mist internet.

Moments later, Romero, 30, and her colleagues set to work. They recorded its vitals — a plump and wholesome Townsend’s warbler weighing 8.4 grams, about as a lot as a ballpoint pen — and gently clamped an identification band on certainly one of its legs.

Then she launched it again into the morning sky to finish its journey north to breeding grounds within the dense coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Precisely why the world attracts as many as 13,000 tanagers, orioles, buntings, grosbeaks and warblers on a single day isn’t totally understood. However scientists counsel that the topography has a funneling impact on birds throughout their long-distance migrations alongside the Pacific Flyway stretching from Central America to the Arctic.

A woman examines a bird

Maeve Secor, a PhD scholar at USC, processes a Nashville warbler caught in a internet on a ridge-line referred to as Bear Divide.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)

Hands hold small bird

Precisely why the world attracts as many as 13,000 tanagers, orioles, buntings, grosbeaks and warblers on a single day isn’t totally understood. Above, a Orange-crowned warbler.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)

“For birds flying north over the Los Angeles Basin and encountering the San Gabriel Mountains, Bear Divide is sort of a gate within the fortress wall,” mentioned Ryan Terrill, a biologist at Cal State Stanislaus who has studied the novel migratory passage because it was found in 2016.

However to totally perceive the burst of avian life, researchers first have to reply just a few burning questions: At what level of their journey do these mixed-species flocks of birds resolve to pour by way of Bear Divide quite than fly over or across the mountains?

And when did this unusual evolutionary migration technique start?

“There may be a lot we nonetheless don’t learn about these birds and their world,” mentioned Lauren Hill, 33, the location’s lead hen bander. “For instance, nobody is aware of the place they have been earlier than exhibiting up right here after dawn.”

To assist crack that thriller, Romero will quickly start outfitting birds at Bear Divide with tiny transmitters linked to a world community of monitoring stations operated by Birds Canada, a nonprofit group devoted to avian science and conservation.

Students watch a woman holding a bird

Visiting college students from a Loyola Marymount College avian and biology class watch as Tania Romero, an avian biologist, talks a few warbler caught in a internet at Bear Divide.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)

Hands hold a small bird

Jayde Blair, a wildlife biologist, research a lazuli bunting, a blue migratory hen from Mexico, caught in a internet at Bear Divide.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)

Pasadena Audubon lately partnered with the U.S. Forest Service to fund and set up a $10,000 monitoring station at Bear Divide. The information it gathers, mixed with ongoing analysis initiatives, will assist scientists higher perceive complicated migratory habits and improve conservation methods at a time when local weather change is upsetting the fragile steadiness between life-and-death situations in historical habitats.

“We’re excited to see this phenomenon explored by researchers,” mentioned Roman Torres, forest supervisor of the roughly 700,000-acre Angeles Nationwide Forest. “Bear Divide is a crucial place within the Pacific Flyway.”

Migrating birds sometimes fly at night time, though morning flights should not unusual within the japanese United States. However scientists know of just one different location in California the place migrating birds fly in daylight: Butterbredt Spring in japanese Kern County.

At Butterbredt Spring, nonetheless, nocturnal migrants proceed flying into the daylight. At Bear Divide, scientists say, they seem to cease someplace and watch for dawn earlier than whooshing by way of the passage at about 30 mph.

As a result of Bear Divide has few bushes, counting and figuring out these birds may be difficult for even seasoned birders.

However by 8 a.m. on Tuesday, a staff led by Kelsey Reckling, 31, had counted 500 birds representing 38 species, together with lazuli buntings, chipping sparrows and hermit warblers.

People search the morning sky for migrating birds

Van Pierszalowski, a birder, left, and Ian Davies, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, search the morning sky for migrating birds at Bear Divide within the San Gabriel Mountains.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)

Close by, the anticipation of scientific discovery was excessive as others trudged by way of thick brush and over rocky trails to get well and study specimens snagged in mist nets stretching greater than 1,000 ft throughout the divide.

“It’s wonderful to see one thing so inspiring and actually wild unfolding in an enormous filth car parking zone,” Chris Spurgeon, spokesman for Pasadena Audubon, mentioned with a smile. “However Southern California is stuffed with nondescript locations that to birders are pure magic.”

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