Who says you can’t see rare birds in L.A.? John Garrett, an intern at Audubon Center at Debs Park reports that he saw a Yellow-filled Cuckoo while at work this week in Ernest E. Debs Park. Yellow-billed Cuckoos, while common in the East, have been greatly reduced in the West in the last 100 years, mostly due to habitat loss. According to Cornell’s Birds of North America, “In California, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo this cuckoo once numbered more than 15,000 pairs, but the population has been reduced to about 30 pairs in less than 100 years due to the destruction of preferred riparian habitat and to pesticide use.” Maybe Audubon attracts them — another place to see them in California is the South Fork Kern River, where Audubon’s Kern River Preserve is protecting one of the great stands of cottonwood riparian forests.

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