He’s for the birds

In a city of mostly concrete and actresses, there are people who
look in mirrors and there are people who look in bushes. UCLA
alumnus Jason Finley, a graduate in cognitive science, finds his
excitement peering into the latter.

On Oct. 19 at 8:30 a.m. he was already out on a less-traveled
path of North Campus with a camera slung across his shoulder and an
ear patiently cocked. One almost wondered what he found so
interesting about the noise of Sunset Blvd. traffic and the brick
backside of the Anderson Building.

But soon the eye adjusts and the eardrum, numbed by incessant
cell phone use, awakens to a rainbow of sound just below the din of
rushing cars. It can take only one chirp, a flash of a yellow wing
and suddenly, here in the middle of gray Los Angeles, there is a
world humming with vibrant and unexploited detail. Ornithology, the
scientific study of nature’s feathered creatures, isn’t
merely for the birds.

“I’ve become fascinated with watching the birds on
campus because it has really added a new level of perception to my
experience of the world around me,” Finley said, moments
after spotting a Yellow-rumped Warbler. “It turns out that
we’re surrounded by birds most of the time and it’s
something you would probably never even notice unless you started
paying attention.”

Finley is one of UCLA’s campus “birders.” He
runs a Web site, birdsofwestwood.com, which documents the many
different varieties of birds on campus using photos, sound clips,
research and a bit of empirical knowledge gained by his own
explorations. Since his interest in birding matured in 2003,
Finley’s life list, a term for the number of species the
birder has documented, is at 100. Even Finley’s weekends and
vacations are filled with bird watching anecdotes. For Finley,
they’re not just something nice to look at.

“Paying attention to birds helps bring home the moral
responsibility human beings have to act on behalf of the entire
living world,” Finley said. “Most people don’t
realize our actions affect everything. We are the only organisms
known that have the ability to choose our action rationally and not
just according to our instincts.”

As it turns out, with its ever-blooming trees and green lawns,
UCLA’s campus is not a bad place for a birder. In fact,
university campuses are listed as one of the top three places to
bird watch in big cities, aside from parks and cemeteries where
ample green space makes for urban bird paradise.

Several years ago, while stumbling across the Botanical Gardens
and Stone Canyon Creek as an undergraduate, Finley had the idea of
making the Web site. He figured it would be a small endeavor
starring a minor cast of pigeons, sparrows and crows.

But Finley had underestimated UCLA’s bird diversity.
Today, the Web site features over 50 species, from the rare Hermit
Thrush to the notorious crumb stealing Rock Pigeon.

“We think of nature as something out there in the
mountains or in the forest, but that’s not the case at
all,” Finley said. “Even though we’ve built up
these structures and societies around us, it hasn’t displaced
nature so much as it has altered it. We’re still in nature
right now and the birds make that apparent.”

Most photographs on the site are a result of long hours spent in
quiet observation, with a telephoto lens on long-term loan from his
sister. After graduating in 2003, Finley now works as a researcher
in the cognitive science department and is applying to graduate
schools, but finds he has more time now to pursue his favorite
flighty creatures.

However, Finley’s recreational hobby has recently become
of scientific use to UCLA research biologist Dr. Rafe Sagarin, who
has been given a grant to restore the Stone Canyon Creek by
reintroducing native plants and uncovering buried sections of the
creek.

Creek restoration is slated to start Sunday and there is hope
that careful documentation of bird populations before and after
restoration will help demonstrate the impact of Sagarin’s
efforts. Campus group Environmental Bruins plans on providing
manpower to the restoration.

Coincidently, Environmental Bruins activities coordinator Bobby
Walsh, a third-year ecology and evolutionary biology student, is a
birder as well and has a life list of 218.

Finley and Walsh devised a plan to do a point count on the bird
populations of Stone Canyon Creek and have posted a bird
observation kit on Finley’s Web site, which includes a map
and worksheet to use when documenting sightings. Students have been
invited to visit the campus creek for 10 minutes and record the
birds they see. Photos, description, tips and recordings of the
birds’ songs are on the site to guide even the amateur
through ten minutes of observation.

Finley and Walsh have encouraged all to participate, regardless
of experience. Walsh, who has been on many birding trips with the
Los Angeles Audubon Society, said he is quite aware of the birder
stereotype, such as the middle-aged man out for adventure or the
elderly lady enamored with nature. For most, it boils down to
either a hobby or an obsession, but many students don’t even
know they are intrigued.

“You don’t see people strolling around with
binoculars all the time on campus, but there’s more bird
watchers here than you think,” Walsh said. “A lot of
people do it casually. They’ll feed birds from their balcony
of their apartment and know what some of the names are.”

Interest in the birds on campus is as old as the campus itself.
Ornithologist Dr. Loye Miller, a professor who was part of the
university’s move to its present location in 1929, wrote
extensively about the impact of the campus to the native birdlife
from 1929 to 1944 in his book, “The Birds of Campus.”
He listed over 100 different species, but since Miller’s
time, many non-native plants have been introduced to campus and new
buildings have been built. Consequently, in the last 50 years, the
number of different bird species on campus has been divided almost
in half.

“I don’t think anyone ever argued that a university
campus is established with the goal of maintaining maximum native
habitats,” said Kimball Garrett, ornithology collections
manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

Garrett attended UCLA as an undergraduate and graduate biology
student in the 1970s and has documented 453 bird species in the Los
Angeles area.

“On the other hand, it’s always nice if possible for
the development and land use to proceed in a way that maintains the
natural habitat and native wildlife. Observing changes in bird
populations over the decades tells you a lot about what’s
going on in the environment,” Garrett said.

Native scrubs, willows and other habitats have gradually been
pushed out from campus. Quails, roadrunners and other birds that
rely on these habitats are no longer found on campus, while some
old inhabitants such as the Bell’s Vireo are now on the
endangered list . But new, richer neighbors have come to campus,
such as the parakeet, attracted to the exotic trees. Garret pays
particular attention to non-native bird populations in the region,
such as the parrots, whose Los Angeles population is descended
entirely from escaped or released pets.

Canvases of color, rebels of gravity, clues to an
ecosystem’s health, birds are more than just the ordinary
winged fellows they pretend to be. The more one looks, the more one
sees the mystery of these “ambassadors of nature,” as
Finley said.

“They are very poignant representatives of the wonder and
fragility of the living world that we have become a dominant
part.”

Visit Finley’s Web site at www.birdsofwestwood.com for
more information about assisting in the bird survey.