In a nondescript spot in the western Angeles National Forest known as Bear Divide, Ben Szanto on Tuesday, May 9, walked quickly, carrying in a cloth pouch a songbird he plucked from mesh nets that had been stretched across the mountainous ledge.
Szanto, 28, of Mar Vista, blew on the live bird’s feathers to uncover its muscle-to-fat ratio and placed it on a scale, as a team of scientists hurriedly jotted down physical traits. By quickly affixing a band with a unique serial number to the leg of this Swainson’s thrush, it’s forever coded with vitals and its migration spot — data that can be downloaded by the next person who finds the banded bird.
Where the mighty San Gabriel Mountains crouch down to only 1,500-foot elevation north of Lake View Terrace, thousands of migrating songbirds fly every day in the spring on their journey to Northern California, and some fly as far as Alaska. This recently discovered migration phenomenon has tickled the fancy of bird watchers and launched new scientific studies of bird migration in Los Angeles County.
“It is the ability to watch songbirds actively migrating which is really unique,” explained Ryan Terrill, assistant professor of biology at Cal State University, Stanislaus and science director at the Klamath Bird Observatory in Ashland, Oregon. The birds fly by in swarms like bees, dozens at a time, making Bear Divide the most amazing spot to watch migrating songbirds in California, experts said.
“If you see a dozen Western Tanagers, I’d say that was an awesome bird-watching day,” Terrill said during an interview on Monday, May 8. “Here, you can see 3,000 of them.”
Scientists didn’t even know that songbirds migrated during the day, he said. That changed in 2019 when Terrill heard about this place when he was doing post-doctorate work at Occidental College in Eagle Rock. He started visiting the spot in the forest to witness it himself. That led to an official bird-banding and bird-counting operation…
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