The Brief

Parrots have been waking up Southern Californians with their squawking for more than 70 years now. Assumed to have arrived here as part of the pet trade as far back as the 1950s, they're originally from Mexico, where they're endangered.

Now, they're thriving in places like Los Angeles, their numbers exploding over the past decade.

That success may not seem like a surprise to you if you've been listening to them chatter away outside your apartment, or fly en masse from one city block to another.

However, their rise has captured the interest of academics, like those at Occidental College, who took me on a parrot outing in Pasadena, and made the case that they need the public's help to truly understand the birds.

Russell Campbell and John McCormack from Occidental College pointing out parrots congregating in sycamore trees at dusk in Pasadena.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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A lot to learn

The team at Occidental set out to explore how and why the parrots have been thriving. It's curious because our environment is wildly different than where they come from in Mexico. It's colder here, with more development and less vegetation.

One of the reasons for their success seems to be — much like with the Swinhoe's white-eye — that over the past century, we inadvertently built an ideal environment for the parrots by importing non-native subtropical plants, kept alive with supplemental irrigation.

"We have this abundance of exotic trees that they've been able to take advantage of that none of the native species have been using. And so it was that perfect opening for them to be able to come in and thrive here," said Brenda Ramirez, staff lead of the Free Flying Los Angeles Parrot Project at Occidental College and lead author on a recent paper that looked specifically at red and lilac-crowned parrots.

They seem to love loquats, she said.

Another factor behind their rise is likely just their general ability to adapt.

"They seem to have some behavioral plasticity, in the sense that they can change their behaviors," said John McCormack, director of the Moore Lab of Zoology at Occidental. He joined us in the field alongside a colleague, Russell Campbell.

Parrots are quite smart and tolerant of a range of conditions. They're able to figure out survival in new habitats and which food sources will work for them — though, there's likely a limit to this adaptation, as they're often found in areas where the temperature doesn't usually drop below freezing like in Florida and Texas.

It also probably helps that they don't have any natural predators here.

Could we see a new parrot evolve?

Another fascinating aspect is that though different types of parrots have congregated here from various parts of Mexico, they're commingling and in some cases, are believed to be cross breeding and hybridizing — though it's not common.

"There is definitely evidence for hybridization," said McCormack.

"They look kind of halfway in between red-crowned and lilac-crowned, or they look like red-crowned with a little dash of yellow in the head, so maybe the hybridization is with yellow-headed parrots. We're just starting to get some DNA evidence where you can see it in the DNA as well."

There's a remote, theoretical possibility that we might even eventually see a unique Southern California parrot develop.

"That doesn't seem to be happening in the city right now, but you never know. Evolution's a journey and you don't know where it's gonna end up," said McCormack.

Yellow-headed parrots hanging out at dusk above a busy street in Pasadena.

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Russell Campbell

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How you can help scientists study the parrots

One of the best ways for scientists to research bird movement, behaviors and adaptations, is with regular in-field documentation, which is where you come in. Academics can pull data from eBird (Cornell University) and iNaturalist, a free app that you can download and use to both identify and take pictures of birds that you find. That's where Ramirez pulled information from for the latest study.

"The more people involved, the better," she said.

"We could potentially even draw habitat data and dietary data, because a lot of the time you'll see them eating or interacting with one another, and so there's tons of data that we can pull from these community science observations."

Burrowing parakeets fly through the sky.

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Russell Campbell

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Where to find parrots

If you'd like to go parrot spotting, Campbell recommends you head to one of the spots in the below map either right at dawn or dusk.

You can also visit eBird to find other potential roost sites near you.

When you get to your viewing spot, you're probably going to hear the parrots before you see them. And it's inevitable that when you do finally spot them, they'll all randomly fly away at once in search of another spot to sleep for the night.

Mitred parakeets sitting in a tree.

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Russell Campbell

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There are lots of different parrots to go looking for. Campbell passed along this list with recommendations for Southern Californians:

• Red-crowned parrots, lilac-crowned parrots and red-masked parakeets: Primarily in Northeast L.A.
• Yellow-headed parrot: Almost exclusively in Pasadena.
• Mitred parakeets and yellow-chevroned parakeets: Widespread across the L.A. area.
• Nanday parakeets: Malibu, Santa Monica and throughout the Santa Monica Mountains.

Red-crowned parrot in Los Angeles.

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Russell Campbell

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Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.