Topic Archive: Fauna & flora
Rico Gagliano, a reporter for "Marketplace" and co-host of "The Dinner Party Download" podcast, sent along this photo of a tree that blew down during this morning's wind gusts. No...
Posted December 22, 2009 2:25 PM
One thing we've all learned about KTLA reporter Lu Parker is that she loves animals, and especially her rescue dog Monkey. They'll be featured in an upcoming photo spread in...
Posted December 21, 2009 6:12 PM
Channel 5 reporter (and Villaraigosa main squeeze) Lu Parker just tweeted that she has a new blog post up. It's a Christmas gift suggestion, and like much of her online...
Posted December 9, 2009 2:48 PM
Somebody had to represent Highland Park's favorite son in Yosemite Valley, and LA Observed was honored to make the introduction. That's Chicken Boy at Lower Yosemite Falls. Below is also...
Posted November 24, 2009 11:45 AM
The feds have formally removed pelicans from the endangered species list, hailing the bird's recovery as evidence that the species law works. Brown pelicans were declared endangered in 1970, when...
Posted November 11, 2009 9:37 PM
Q: What's more bizarre than the Los Angeles Times having a blog for the paper's most inveterate staff animal lovers to talk about pets, animal causes and, of course, dogs...
Posted November 6, 2009 4:49 PM
A coyote nabbed Jessica Simpson's dog:And her fans are rallying:Well, maybe not all of them:...
Posted September 16, 2009 4:32 PM
A detection dog working with inspectors found a package at a FedEx depot in Sacramento that contained at least 100 live Asian citrus psyllids, including juveniles and adults, the L.A....
Posted August 28, 2009 2:55 PM
Those Asian citrus psyllids trapped in Orange County last week tested negative for the greening disease that has wiped out citrus industries around the world. But one of the insects...
Posted August 26, 2009 2:07 PM
Sad news at Chicken Corner. Rosie, who decorates the blog's banner, has gone to the big farm in the country at age fourteenish. "Rosie's dog friends included Oscar the Dog...
Posted August 24, 2009 2:59 PM
While crackdowns on counterfeit clothes and DVDs get more attention, Ed Fuentes reports at Blogdowntown that "the Fashion District's illegal animal trade continues unabated." The photo is by Fuentes. According...
Posted August 21, 2009 10:52 PM
News and notes are hidden after the jump. Also see today's Mark Lacter morning headlines at LA Biz Observed, and follow Mark and Kevin on Twitter....
Posted August 18, 2009 9:16 AM
The City of Los Angeles loves to designate historic-cultural monuments, from pallets stacked in an eccentric guy's backyard in Van Nuys (since thrown away) to actual significant buildings. Even street...
Posted June 30, 2009 2:38 PM
The smell of rotting flesh is wafting again at the Huntington Library's tropical conservatory in San Marino. Star-News: After keeping botanists on tenterhooks for more than two weeks, the giant...
Posted June 17, 2009 5:30 PM
Zach Behrens at LAist has gotten together a map showing the overlapping ranges claimed by the seven mountain lions believed to still inhabit the Santa Monicas, Santa Susanas and Simi...
Posted June 11, 2009 12:09 AM
The young migrating gray whale is spending much of its time in the main Marina del Rey channel. KABC's Michael Linder says you can often spot the whale from the...
Posted June 9, 2009 12:15 AM
Two California men were indicted today on federal charges that they illegally smuggled Asian songbirds into the country. One man was stopped at LAX upon return from Vietnam and found...
Posted May 5, 2009 4:08 PM
Tuk, a 16 year old pileated gibbon, has given birth at the Gibbon Conservation Center in Saugus. They can't yet tell the new arrival's sex — it's clinging tightly to...
Posted May 4, 2009 12:42 PM
"In spring, long, bristle-like stamens cluster together in intensely red, 6-inch long, hanging, bottlebrush-shaped cylinders that look like they would make doing the dishes fun," writes Pieter Severynen at the...
Posted April 26, 2009 10:18 PM
'Tis the season for babies in the Los Angeles wildlife realm, and thus babies in distress. Mary Cummins, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator and president of Animal Advocates, collected this...
Posted April 16, 2009 4:28 PM
Dogs, horses, rabbits, cats, turtles, birds — even a few lizards and a snake — got along famously at Saturday's traditional Blessing of the Animals at Olvera Street and...
Posted April 11, 2009 10:41 PM
A new city proposed on the Tejon Ranch at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley — or viewed another way, on the northern edge of SoCal's sprawl —...
Posted March 26, 2009 10:29 PM
Author John Shannon says he smelled something burning while driving home today. Under the hood of his car he found this bird's nest smoldering atop the engine. His ride had...
Posted March 10, 2009 10:10 PM
After an adult male opposum was shot in the head in Van Nuys on Saturday, it required the neighborhood kids, an Animal Services officer, Valley Wildlife Care in Woodland Hills...
Posted February 5, 2009 9:29 AM
Long Beach City College is awash in bunny rabbits, "big, fat, brazen ones who will run up to strangers and beg for food," says the blogger at UnHip L.A. She...
Posted January 26, 2009 8:06 PM
Syd Lovelace and Booda on a paddleboard off Will Rogers State Beach this evening, with Catalina in the background. "Syd and Booda (who is a rescue dog) are Venice residents...
Posted January 14, 2009 9:59 PM
Pasadena plans to tear out 43 mature shade trees along Colorado Boulevard, Lake and Los Robles and replace them with shadeless, soulless fan palms (yuck) and gingkos. The ficus trees...
Posted January 14, 2009 1:27 PM
My segment on the air at 4:44 p.m. centers on the ailment afflicting brown pelicans, with a little mention of the SS Catalina meeting its demise. It's about icons of...
Posted January 9, 2009 4:22 PM
Decades after the damage from DDT almost destroyed the Southern California brown pelican population, something is causing the coastal birds to get sick and turn up distressed in unusual places:...
Posted January 5, 2009 11:16 PM
A two-foot-long alligator was captured this morning on 4th Avenue in Venice. It's being held at a city animal shelter. That's a long way from Reggie's old prowling grounds, and...
Posted November 19, 2008 12:14 PM
The 25-year-old woman was running near the Griffith Park carousel on Tuesday morning when she got nipped by a coyote. LAT...
Posted October 8, 2008 3:33 PM
Excellent piece by Max Taves in the LA Weekly on elderly identical twin sisters in Pacific Palisades who "had spent years fanatically feeding the Palisades’ rat population. Although the full...
Posted July 31, 2008 10:22 PM
A San Marino home has about a million bees buzzing around it — in the walls and in the house — and honey is oozing out of the walls in...
Posted March 12, 2008 9:53 AM
Who knew? I'm told, by Los Angeles poet Richard Beban, that this morning's verse about opossums was no lone wolf. He says there is something of a cult of local...
Posted January 30, 2008 4:29 PM
In The Oldest Living Thing in L.A., Larry Levis observes an opossum trying to cross Wilshire and Santa Monica. Sample: A few steps forward, then back away from the breath...
Posted January 30, 2008 8:21 AM
L.A.'s most famous hard-to-catch alligator slipped out of his enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo last night, but was re-incarcerated after a short walk on the wild side. Donna Littlejohn...
Posted August 15, 2007 11:48 AM
Garden expert Lili Singer acknowledges that the opossums that roam Los Angeles at night look like bloated rats, but she's a fan nonetheless. The first Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) was...
Posted June 28, 2007 10:43 AM
Machado Lake's alligator in residence could be seen a lot yesterday, drifting along the surface, sunning and ignoring the audience of onlookers and photographers. "Reggie was doing everything but the...
Posted May 10, 2007 8:30 AM
It's in New York, not here, but I thought you'd want to see this video....
Posted February 23, 2007 12:22 PM
Designer and blogger Marc Grobman (the guy campaigning to de-uglify Donald Sterling's Times ads) became so curious about the crows invading his Santa Monica neighborhood each winter that he went...
Posted February 20, 2007 1:26 PM
The Daily Breeze gathers together all the reports of big cat sightings through the years on the Palos Verdes peninsula — and official assurances that nothing has ever been confirmed...
Posted August 28, 2006 9:53 AM
There's no denying that palm trees are an iconic feature of the Los Angeles landscape, despite being non-native and ecologically almost worthless. In this week's CityBeat (out today), David Davin...
Posted August 24, 2006 10:49 AM
The Daily Breeze, perhaps a little hopefully, reports that on Day 327 of the great South Bay Gator Watch it's still possible that Reggie is lurking somewhere in Machado Lake....
Posted July 5, 2006 12:05 AM
See it full size at blogger Bad Mom, Good Mom's photo queue, on the recommendation of Angeleno-in-exile Virginia Postrel....
Posted June 9, 2006 1:21 AM
The May cover of Los Angeles pushes 52 Dream Weekends, but the talker story of the month is Jesse Katz's piece on the pets we kill and Ed Boks, newly...
Posted April 25, 2006 1:20 PM
Reggie, the alligator set loose last year in Harbor City's Machado Lake, hasn't been seen since October. Gator watchers are pretty sure he's still there, though, and will be waking...
Posted March 27, 2006 9:46 AM
Pink flowers of the floss-silk tree are the autumnal corollary of spring's lavender jacaranda blooms that color Los Angeles streets. Tim McGarry at Angels and Vagabonds blogs an appreciation, along...
Posted October 12, 2005 10:23 PM
Well they finally caught Reggie this morning—or did they? CNN and AP posted stories this morning that the Monster of Machado Lake was wrestled into custody by the same Colorado...
Posted September 13, 2005 9:33 AM
Somehow, I'm not surprised by this news. A second "crocodilian" has been spotted near Harbor City, this time in a flood control channel that feeds into Machado Lake. That's the...
Posted September 7, 2005 11:15 AM
The Florida gator-nabbers who were summoned to save Machado Lake from the terror of Reggie have called it quits for now—just like the Colorado wranglers before them. The Floridians didn't...
Posted August 27, 2005 12:56 AM
That elusive alligator is still loose in Machado Lake, but two men suspected of releasing the gator in Harbor Regional Park two months ago were arrested today. Turns out that...
Posted August 24, 2005 5:39 PM
Councilwoman Janice Hahn is getting all territorial about the reclusive reptile that is putting Machado Lake and Harbor City on the pop culture map. A Florida theme park has come...
Posted August 23, 2005 10:52 PM
I confess I haven't been monitoring all of the media buzz, so the first name I've seen given to the Menace of Machado Lake comes from Dan Glaister, L.A. correspondent...
Posted August 19, 2005 11:40 AM
Pretty soon the wily alligator or caiman—take your pick—that is vacationing at Machado Lake is going to get a cute name and media immortality. He or she eluded the hunters...
Posted August 18, 2005 12:52 AM
On Day Six, they couldn't agree whether it's a caiman or an alligator. Nor could the barefoot gator wranglers from Colorado trap the tortilla-gobbling, raw chicken-eschewing monster in a big...
Posted August 17, 2005 9:38 AM
On Day 5 of the Great Caiman Hunt in Harbor City, experts fly in (from Colorado, not South America) and a woman tells the Breeze that she reported a sighting...
Posted August 16, 2005 8:34 AM
Kids down in Harbor City aren't fazed by the six- to eight-foot caiman that has moved into Machado Lake—they threw tortillas at the pseudo-croc. Well why not? Authorities haven't been...
Posted August 15, 2005 1:18 AM
His landlord sold Tony Tocco's Lawndale house for condos, and now Tocco has to find a home for his unusual menagerie. He's got the usual dog, cat, snake and crows...
Posted July 5, 2005 11:13 AM
LA.com says they have caught the San Francisco Chronicle's website in some premature gossiping. SFGate's Daily Dish column has a colorful item about a PETA disruption during lunch today at...
Posted March 10, 2005 5:28 PM
Walking in L.A. took a stroll this month along, over and in the Los Angeles River in Burbank and Glendale. He has put up a batch of photos and...
Posted January 27, 2005 2:06 AM
A pod of six to eight blue whales — the biggest animals on Earth — has been feeding in the Catalina Channel off Point Fermin this week, a story in...
Posted September 3, 2004 11:01 AM
The month or so each spring when the jacarandas are blooming is my favorite time in Los Angeles. The splashes of color have seemed exceptional this year, at least on...
Posted May 31, 2004 1:16 PM
West Nile virus, now confirmed in Los Angeles County....
Posted September 16, 2003 2:50 AM
