The home field advantage

IT’S SUNRISE — a new day’s first rays of light are just peeking over the nearby mountains and illuminating the surrounding vegetation in a warm bath of golden light. As the day starts, I’m sitting quietly in my photo blind waiting for a great bird photography opportunity to happen. The predawn is quiet, but as the sun climbs higher in the sky, the chip notes of Yellow-rumped Warblers catch my attention. A Black Phoebe snaps nearly invisible insects from mid-air and then returns to the same perch again and again. Lesser Goldfinches chatter and squabble among the flowering plants next to me, and an Anna’s Hummingbird buzzes back and forth, searching out small morsels of food.

So where am I? Tucked into the remote wilderness of California’s Santa Monica Mountains? On a chaparral-covered hillside somewhere in Santa Barbara County, perhaps? Or maybe I’m at a famous birding hotspot like the hillsides that surround Morro Bay a little farther north. Actually, the answer is that I’m in my own backyard smack dab in the middle of the urban sprawl of Los Angeles and its 11 million-plus residents!