Overlooking a peaceful downtown and West LA from the heights of Runyon (do those hilltops have names?) there was little indication of the fires raging outside Malibu to the west, and outside my own hometown sixty miles to the east. The skies were so clear that I could see Mt. San Bernardino pretty easily - but it was too far away to see the smoke of brushfires as against the smog piling up in LA. Hardly a breeze stirred, but the hot, desert air should have been a clue that Santa Ana winds and fire season were coinciding.
Weather like this is great for birds that soar. I entered RC on the Mulholland side (the top of the canyon), and only when I reached the bottom did any birds appear - a couple dozen buzzards, soaring in a convocation high above the canyon. Shortly after I noticed them, they made a decision, and streamed off in nearly single file to the east. Pretty cool thing to watch. I had by now begun my steep uphill climb, during which I notice a hawk, and later a raven, and then two hawks or buzzards, then four, and two ravens keeping an eye on them. By the time I reached the lookout point above the Outlook sign, most of the birds had disappeared.
Completing my trek back towards the parking on Mullholland, I was not surprised to hear quorks behind me, and turned back to see that the ravens had appeared by the house on the hilltop, quorking contentedly to one another (OK that’s an anthropomorphic imposition - but I do find quorking a contented, happy sound). I couldn’t turn back or I’d be dismally late for work. Hopefully the fires will soon be out, and the rains will soon come, and ravens will begin nesting, so that I can have a go at counting up population. It has become pretty obvious that even a short visit to any portion of the Santa Monica Mountains or Sunset Blvd. will include a raven sighting (more likely that a celebrity sighting, by all appearances), so it is time to start probing more deeply at their life as Angelenos.
In the meantime here is an interesting essay about birds you will not see in these mountains any more.