Mike in the Wild

"Stop calling that  bird a robin redbreast, it's a plain, old robin," are words that resonated in my mind when I first started photographing this avian a couple years ago.  The childhood chastisements were from the older neighborhood kids who wanted to show how much they knew.  While bruising my ego a little, they didn't dampen my interest in this very common and easily identifiable bird in my suburban New Jersey neighborhood.   Many years later and many miles away, and much to my surprise, I also see the bird in my Phoenix neighborhood.  I've always associated the robin with green lawns, pulling earth worms from the muddy ground of just watered grasses.  It turns out that the irrigated landscape of the desert southwest is an ideal hunting ground for this insect loving avian.  It also turns out that this "robin redbreast" isn't just a plain old robin, it's an American robin.   A real robin is actually the European robin, not living ...

It makes sense that a state right next to Arizona would have similar birds.  But what stands out from a couple days birding in southern California is that such a wide variety of birds can be found in such a small geographic area.  And the birds we generally see in the Copper State at higher elevations are found in lower elevations in the Golden State. I birded mostly in the Wood Ranch area of Simi Valley, a bedroom community 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.  This location afforded easy access to the Lang Ranch Open Space  - part of the greater Conejo Open Space Conservation Area - and a network of parks and trails that link up with the greater Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.  You could theoretically hike to the Pacific Ocean, approximately fifteen miles to the south.  But I stayed close to the trailhead, enjoying panoramic views of the surrounding Simi Hills and Santa Susanna Mountains. The terrain was mostly grassland - its ...