Nesting Birds and Their Noisy Ways

While our lives may have been disrupted by the corona virus, this has not impacted our local bird life and our neighborhood is very much alive with the sounds of squabbling and aggressive birds. Mockingbirds have made a nest in the bougainvillea bush in our neighbors garden and the parents are feeding their young with petals from our guava tree and battling and haranguing any potential predators that come too close to their young chicks. The predators who pose a threat include squirrels and cats who despite their claws and size are no match for the mockingbird bombers who dive and peck them ceaselessly.

Alert Parent of young Mocking Bird chicks on guard for predators

These admirable parenting qualities are not limited to the mocking birds and a pair of scrub jays, thankfully nesting in a different tree, spend large amounts of time battling and diving at crows, ravens and the occasional Cooper’s hawk who are local habitants of the Hollywood Hills.
We have lived in the hills for many years but never grow tired of the local bird population which continues to inspire our work. What is still remarkable is the incredible variety of bird life that we see and hear, and which vary with the season’s migratory paths. The beautiful oriels with their orange chests have arrived as have the rufous hummingbirds and both compete for the sugary solution of our bird feeder. To accommodate the oriels larger and wider beak we have removed some of the artificial flowers on the feeder which occasionally results in the odd bee finding its way inside.

Juvenile Mocking Bird Learning the Value of Guava Flowers

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Black Crested Red Whiskered Bulbul

With more time to walk we are able to see more Bulbuls in the Hollywood hills and have managed to photograph several.
We first encountered this petite bird with colorful markings in the 1990’s at the Huntington gardens and felt quite privileged to site this bird that we have always associated with Asia and tropical environments. What we hadn’t realized was that the Bulbul was a common resident of the park in the 1970’s and 80’s and was on the A list as a non-indigenous species and destined for eradication. Thankfully sufficient public and birder opposition resulted in the suspension of this policy and now we enjoy this cheery musical creature in our own neighborhood.

I had a great deal of fun reading about the bird’s diet and habitat on Wikipedia and as a result know this passerine bird to be a fugivore. For those unfamiliar with these terms they simply mean that this is a bird that likes to perch and lives on a fruit diet. As a frugivore it makes sense that the Bulbul now thrives in Florida and southern California where fruit is abundant.
While the Bulbul is named for its small red-whiskers the males back crest and red abdominal feathers are much easier to spot as can be seen here. Like all passerines the Bulbul has three toes that point forward and one pointing back which makes perching an easy task.
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To read more about the Bulbul’s near eradication please the article by Mary Barker


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