How L.A.’s bird population is shaped by historic redlining and racist loan practices

LA Times ^ | 11 Oct 2023 | Dorany Peneda

[rey]

“ How L.A.’s bird population is shaped by historic redlining and racist loan practices”

On a recent afternoon in L.A.’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, Christian Benitez and Eric M. Wood stood outside a corner liquor store searching for birds.

The researchers spotted a house sparrow and pulled binoculars to their eyes. “They’re all over the shrubbery in Boyle Heights,” said Wood, an associate professor of ecology at Cal State Los Angeles.

Among the most ubiquitous and abundant songbirds in the world, house sparrows are urban creatures that thrive where people do. They’re resilient, adaptable and aggressive, and are found around buildings and streets, scavenging food crumbs or nesting in roof tiles.

But less than 10 miles to the northeast, in the wealthy city of San Marino, house sparrows were nowhere to be heard.

Instead of the sparrows, ravens, common pigeons and a Cooper’s hawk the bird watchers spotted in Boyle Heights, the manicured lawns and mature trees of San Marino bristled with a very different assortment of birds.

“There goes a band-tailed pigeon right over there,” Wood exclaimed, turning his attention from a red-tailed hawk. They also recognized acorn woodpeckers, a California towhee, dozens of turkey vultures circling overhead, a dark-eyed junco, a mockingbird, an Anna’s hummingbird and a black phoebe.

It was, the researchers said, a vivid illustration of the so-called luxury effect — the phenomenon by which wealthier, and typically whiter, areas attract a larger and more diverse population of birds.

“That huge difference in wealth, separated by only a few miles, really surprised me when I first moved here,” said Wood, who is from Santa Rosa, in the Bay Area.

[TigersEye]

Yowza! That Morticia could really shake and shimmy. :)

[mikey_hates_everything]

Why don’t the bird watchers go to Compton for a while and complain about the lack of bird diversity there? If they live long enough.

[gundog]

[Altura Ct.]

Penguins are confused.

[Pajamajan]

It was, the researchers said, a vivid illustration of the so-called luxury effect — the phenomenon by which wealthier, and typically whiter, areas attract a larger and more diverse population of birds.

Idiocracy is a documentary.

[Ex-Con777]

Scientists say sparrows are less disturbed by the sound of gunfire and the smell of weed.

EC

[Flycatcher]

DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THE ROBINS I was raised around.

That’s because it’s not. The image is a European Robin, a member of the Old World Flycatcher family. The robins we have in America are officially known as American Robins, and are members of the Thrush family.

Big difference.

[Charlemagne on the Fox]

One would think that SOME editor would have pulled this drivel back for a later date, deeming it somewhat tone deaf given the events of the past week. But no.