The birds appeared in the garden in the spring: small finches, with compact, cinnamon-colored bodies, dark heads, and curious, scale-like feathers on their breasts. They weren’t migrants or vagrants, carried here from somewhere else by the strange weather patterns. They were here to stay. The initial pair soon became a trio. They come every morning to the backyard bird feeder where they politely share with the usual suspects. They bathe in the bird bath and forage for seeds in the author’s garden. Not visitors, but naturalized citizens, so to speak. These small birds are members of the Munia family, known as nutmeg mannikins, spice finches, scaly-breasted munia, and by their scientific name: Lonchura punctulata.
The Munia’s ancestors were imported for the pet trade—legally or illegally—from their native Southeast Asia. It is unclear how they ended up in the wild, but the munias have made the best of it and began to set up shop in their adopted home. Tropical garden plants and abundant seed plants like grasses helped this tiny bird establish a breeding population that spread. Munias are not considered a problem species like some of the other introduced species, at least, not yet. They can be found in suburban areas all along the California coast, but they hadn’t reached Topanga or Malibu yet as far as I knew, although they were present in Pacific Palisades and the Palisades side of Topanga State Park.
That thought also occurred to TNT reader Ann Dittmer, when she encountered a pair of red-whiskered bulbuls on the Woodland Hills edge of Topanga State Park, a distinctive bird with a towering black crest and vivid red head patches. Like the Munias, this species is native to Asia, only these birds originate in places like Nepal and northern India. This species is also thought to have escaped from the pet trade and is now successfully established in the Los Angeles Area.
Seeing them in her neighborhood was a first for Ann, but this pair appears to have set up housekeeping in their new neighborhood. Once heard, their distinctive call, which sounds not unlike the more musical beeps produced by R2D2, can’t be mistaken for any other bird. The bulbul’s scientific name, Pycnonotus jocosus, references this species’ remarkable vocalizations with the descriptor “joculous,” meaning jocular—humorous, joking, jovial, and a bit bombastic.
Red-whiskered bulbuls have made themselves at home in foothill communities like Altadena, and in the Eastern Santa Monica Mountains, including as far west as Pacific Palisades, but in the past they’ve been vanishingly rare in the Topanga area, with just a handful of sightings. The munias are seed eaters, with beaks specially adapted to act as nutcrackers. The bulbuls are fruit eaters that thrive in suburban areas with ample fruit trees and plants that produce ornamental berries. They both showed up this year in places where this pair of longtime naturalists had never seen them.
Why? One theory is that these species may be refugees from the Palisades Fire, and if that’s the case, they may not be the only species on the move.
We’ve talked in the past about Los Angeles County’s naturalized parrot population, which now includes nine species in and around the Santa Monica Mountains, including Topanga’s cheerful, loud, smart, and gregarious Nanday parakeets, Aratinga nenday (topanganewtimes.com/2023/08/25/parrots-in-paradise).
In March of this year, Nandays were in the news for having appeared in the Fillmore area of Ventura County for the first time. Unlike some of their larger parrot cousins, Nanday parakeets are not known to travel far distances. Most of the local population live in and around the canyons and coastline of the Santa Monica Mountains. Nandays are abundant in places like Topanga, because the canyon’s sycamore trees offer them ideal habitat. Nandays are cavity-nesters who find the sycamore’s hollow limbs and trunks to exactly suit their needs, and they are also attracted to sycamore fruits, which are abundant enough to accommodate not only the native species who depend on them but a bunch of colorful, charismatic immigrants, as well.
Nandays are usually considered to be homebodies who aren’t strong, long-distance fliers, but a small flock of Nandays somehow managed to cross the 101 freeway sometime last year. The LAist reporter Reporter Cato Hernández broke the story earlier this year, reporting that it wasn’t clear how the small group of Nanday parakeets got to Fillmore, but that it was the first time they had appeared in that area. Their presence has been documented on the citizen science site iNaturalist for about six months, suggesting that these birds may have found themselves a new niche in the canyons in this part of Ventura county that are also sycamore habitat.
Whether or not the munias, bulbuls and Nandays were displaced by the Palisades Fire, there are lots of other non-native species that have successfully expanded their range without being driven to it by disaster.
The great-tailed grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) makes its presence in Los Angeles County felt through its impressive vocalizations. If this large, iridescent, black bird sounds like it belongs in a jungle, that’s because it does. Grackles originate in South and Central America. The Aztecs, taken by their beautiful plumage, are said to have imported this bird to Mexico. It’s unclear how grackles ended up in Los Angeles, but they appear to have arrived sometime during the 1980s and have made a home for themselves near manmade bodies of water. Here in the Santa Monica Mountains they are more recent arrivals, but they can be found in Westlake Village, Calabasas, Malibou Lake, and especially in Malibu’s Legacy Park—and the surrounding shopping centers, where they may just show up to share the lunch of the unwary outdoor diner or picnicker.
The European starling is another high profile non native. This species is said to have been deliberately introduced by a man named Eugene Schieffelin and his friends as part of a deeply misguided effort to bring all of the plants and animals mentioned by Shakespeare to the US. Schieffelin famously released a hundred starlings in New York’s Central Park in the early 1890s. The story is that the millions of starlings in North America all descend from these birds, but considering that starlings were sold for the pet trade it seems likely that the Shakespearean experiment isn’t the whole story.
The starling’s beautiful plumage and whistling call make it easy to identify. These intelligent birds are born mimics who can imitate a car alarm, cat calls, phone ring tones, the song of other birds, and can also learn to repeat human speech.
In many areas these intelligent, gregarious birds form enormous flocks and have become major agricultural pests. In the Santa Monica Mountains they are not yet a problem. One rarely sees (or hears) more than a few at a time. However, as beautiful as these birds are, their presence is unwelcome because they can aggressively outcompete native species.
The Eurasian ring-necked or collared dove, Streptopelia decaocto, may hold the avian speed record for spreading through the US. According to the Cornell Bird Lab, Eurasian doves released in the Bahamas in the mid 1970s had already made their way to Florida by 1982. They have now spread across the continent and as far west as Alaska.
These large doves are beautiful, but their rapid spread is alarming, and biologists are concerned that they have the potential to outcompete native species like the mourning dove, Zenaida macroura. So far, Eurasian doves prefer urban areas over wildlands.They are not abundant yet in the Santa Monica Mountains, but they are present. Like the grackles, the bulbuls, and the starlings, this species makes itself known by its distinctive call: a three-note query that sounds like “you, who, who,” or a distinctly unmusical squawk that resembles the blat of a toy horn.
Topanga has another non native bird species that, despite its large size and spectacular appearance, is more often heard than seen. No one seems sure just when Topanga’s peacocks arrived in the canyon. One theory suggests they escaped from Moonfire, the sixty-acre ranch and exotic animal sanctuary built by the eccentric and reclusive Lewis Beach Marvin III, heir to the S&H Green Stamp fortune in the 1960s, but some evidence suggests the birds may have already been here by then.
The first peacocks were imported into Southern California in the late nineteenth century, so it’s not unreasonable to suppose an earlier Topangan might have acquired some. Peacocks will hunt and eat snakes, including venomous ones like rattlers, and are excellent watch dogs, sounding the alarm if predators are around.
However the peacocks got here, Topanga’s environment suited them, and they’ve made a home for themselves. On spring nights their call of “help, help,” and “ee aw” echo across the canyon. Sometimes they are spotted roaming neighborhoods, or roosting in backyard trees, and occasionally they cause minor traffic jams while their human neighbors wait for them to cross the road at a leisurely pace that suits their regal appearance, their less dignified peachicks straggling behind them.
Point Dume in Malibu also has a feral pea fowl population, and so does Palos Verdes. These birds, which originate in the jungles of India, are surprisingly adaptable, and while they aren’t strong fliers they can launch themselves up into the treetops to keep out reach of dogs, coyotes and mountain lions, all of which might enjoy a medieval-style peacock dinner.
Not everyone loves the peacocks, but those who don’t tend to be the type of people who don’t stay for long. They’re the ones who also can’t cope with snakes in the garden, tarantulas wandering into the garage or the kitchen, the evening or pre-dawn coyote chorus, and the neighbors who like to chant while the full moon rises every month.
Not every new bird resident is non native. Los Angeles’ manmade pools, reservoirs, and golf courses have enticed some Canada geese to give up migration and stay year round. Most geese still migrate, but some now stay put—happy to enjoy year-round good weather, ample food, with no long, biannual commute.
The dark-eyed junco is another former migrant who is increasingly trading its frequent-flier miles for a permanent Southern California home. This small songbird, once only a seasonal visitor, is now an abundant year-round resident in the Santa Monica Mountains. Here at TNT the garden is full of their chirps and the geiger-counter-like ticking they make when humans come too close. They are a small reminder that climate change and other environmental changes, from paving wildlands to rewilding urban areas, impacts all of us.
Birds, especially those who have evolved the capability to migrate, have an advantage over earthbound species. As climate change alters their habitat, some have the ability to relocate, others have been forced to adapt to a new home. All of the species in this feature have shown remarkable adaptability. They have made homes among us, and become part of the local ecosystem. Are the munias here to stay, like the parrots, or will they move on? We started with two munias in our garden, and now have three. Who knows what next spring will bring.
