Caltech Wildlife: Bird Immigrants

Everyone knows Los Angeles is a huge melting pot of human culture, but did you know it’s also home to many animals from around the world?

Pasadena alone has a surprising number of foreign bird species. Look closely and you can spot these feathered visitors daily at Caltech—including some that are endangered. This week’s wildlife column is about these special bird immigrants. (Some photos were taken in the greater Pasadena area, but all the birds mentioned can be found on or near campus if you’re lucky!)

Where there’s water, there’s mallard. On a hot afternoon, you might see a mallard duck floating in the Caltech Pond or Turtle Ponds. They rest beside the turtles or dip their heads into the water to feed. Mallards came from Eurasia, but they’ve made their career here. In 1963, one mallard flew 21,000 feet over Nevada, setting the North American avian altitude record to date (https://web.archive.org/web/20140209231019/http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/birds/birds0011.html).

Many birds in Pasadena were brought here as pets. For example, the Indian peafowl sometimes wanders around the baseball field on South Campus. These peafowl were first brought to Arcadia by a man nicknamed “Lucky Baldwin,” and their descendants now live across Pasadena. You might see them in San Marino, “meowing” loudly from the mansion rooftops. Another Asian bird is the red-whiskered bulbul, named after their red cheek patches. They sing distinct and melodic songs – every time I see or hear them, it reminds me of home.

Do you also know that at least four types of parrots are present around Caltech every day? Originally from Central and South America, they follow the routines passed down from their rainforest ancestors. At sunrise, they gather in the trees near the Cats graduate residence, waking up nocturnal students with screaming baby cries. Once the morning vocal warmup is over, the parrots fly off to search for food in the city. In the evening, they return in small groups—either in duos of life partners or trios of parents and child—flying with short, quick wingbeats. If you’re walking across campus at sunset, take a moment to look up. Their loud calls and swift flights are a daily sign that the day is ending and it’s time (for you too) to head home.

As funny and silly as they look and sound, the background story of the parrots is a sad one. Red-crowned and yellow-headed amazons, the two most common parrot species seen around Caltech, were once prized pets. People loved their bright feathers and their uncanny intelligence to mimic human speech. As a result, wild populations were devasted by poaching and habitat destruction, which pushed their native populations in Mexico near extinction. While beloved in captivity, these parrots were demanding companionship from conspecifics, producing calls up to 120 decibels, comparable to a jet engine. These sounds, which help them talk to each other in the forest, don’t work well in a human home. Many owners couldn’t handle the noise and set the birds free.

Fortunately, Los Angeles has many fruiting trees and plants that aren’t native either, so the parrots found enough food to survive and reproduce. Over time, they formed stable flocks of thousands in the city. Today, there may be more of these parrots living in LA than in their native habitats, where they are still endangered.

Pasadena has become a rare place where birds from all over the world can live side by side. Biologists are amazed by how well they share space and how this mix came to be. These birds didn’t come here by choice—people brought them, often for selfish reasons. But now, generations have hatched and fledged in Pasadena, forming communities that might even proudly name themselves LA parrots (or Caltech parrots, for those who love the trees in the Cats Garden).

If Pasadena hadn’t made space for them, these birds could have disappeared forever. So let’s treasure this living melting pot of cultures and creatures. It is what makes this place so special.