In the face of increasingly destructive wildfires, birdwatchers and community science projects endeavor to help the survival of California’s avian residents

COLORS STORIES | PALETTE 1

COLORS is now working with seasonal color palettes to inspire all activities across our brand. To celebrate the launch of PALETTE 1, we’re publishing “COLORS STORIES” by contributors from the COLORS community that delve into what the colors in the palette mean to them.

The reds, oranges, and yellow ochre tones of PALETTE 1 reminded writer Lisa Kwon of the destructive wildfires she experiences in her home state of California. Due to human-induced climate change, wildfires are spreading more quickly and covering much more land mass, often at unmanageable rates for native species.

With this in mind, Kwon draws on her own experiences as a birdwatcher to speak to members of the statewide initiative Project Phoenix about how small acts of observation can help the U.S. state’s avian residents survive increasingly smoky summers.

Birding—also known as birdwatching—is filled with soft wonder. My own start was quite unexpected: last summer, my dog and I were amazed to see a giant hawk resting on a telephone pole in my boyfriend’s front yard, making a call so loud that it muffled the scurrying sounds of bush dwellers nearby. After seeing this creature—which I later identified as a red-shouldered hawk—at the same time everyday during our walk, I became inspired by how similar we were in our love of routines. The next thing I knew, a pair of binoculars sat atop my holiday wishlist.

While birdwatchers such as myself start looking to the skies for different reasons, we all reap similar restorative benefits from the hobby. Olivia Sanderfoot, a postdoctoral scholar at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), for example, started birding during her senior year in college. “My family was going through a very tough and challenging time,” she explains. While she’d tried yoga, therapy, and meditation to make her feel better, nothing seemed to work. “But I always felt better when I went birding. It became this self-imposed therapeutic practice that took me out of my grief and helped me connect with the environment.”

Before long, what started as a restorative pastime turned into a more serious pursuit: This summer, Sanderfoot founded Project Phoenix, a statewide project that aims to study the effects of wildfires and smoke on birds in neighborhoods throughout California. With support from Los Angeles’ Natural History Museum and UCLA, the program relies on the public’s observations as it attempts to answer one critical question: when our hills and valleys are engulfed in flames, what happens to our birds? “Every year when we start experiencing wildfires, I get enquiries from birders all over the state,” says Sanderfoot. “‘Where do the birds go?’ ‘Are they going to be okay?’ ‘Why are they not at my feeder?’ They’re all really good questions, but we don’t have answers right now.”

Due to birds’ high sensitivity to air pollution, many people assume wildfires endanger our feathered friends. It’s not that straightforward, as wildfire flames are meaningful to our world: they have forged our great redwood forests and desert grasslands, and birds have adapted to their occurrence. The black-backed woodpecker, for example, is a so-called “fire specialist”, and nests in the cavities of fire-killed trees.

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“Regular observations during good conditions across a diversity of habitats and land uses allow us to be ready for when there is smoke, so we can make comparisons.”

This said, today California wildfires are spreading more quickly and covering much more land mass, often at unmanageable rates for species. As juvenile birds, black-backed woodpeckers seek refuge in places with canopy coverage. They need live, intact forests to take shelter in and protect themselves from predators. As a result, even “fire specialists” can’t cope when hot and unruly conflagrations scorch the trees and bushes with no mercy.

Tule geese are another species struggling to cope with the climate change-induced increase of wildfires. In 2020, the ornithologist Cory Overton tracked their migration patterns. Every fall, the geese reliably reach their destinations at predictable times as they fly from the north shore of Alaska to California’s Central Valley with one stopover at a lake in Oregon. During 2020’s unprecedented disastrous fires in the Pacific Northwest, however, Overton noticed something peculiar: the geese took four extra days to reach their Oregon lake, presumably having expended an enormous amount of extra energy than they had allocated for their carefully timed travel. Many of the geese stopped on the waters and halted their migration entirely, seemingly to wait out the smoke coming from the wildfires.

Overton’s study had a limited scope. Project Phoenix, on the other hand, is able to research on a wider scale. This summer, the program asked their two hundred plus volunteers of novices and expert birders to walk around their respective neighborhoods, listen to songs, and take note of the birds they see for just ten minutes a week. “These regular observations during good conditions across a diversity of habitats and land uses, from urban cores to rural areas, allow us to be ready for when there is smoke, so we can make comparisons,” says Morgan Tingley, the programme’s lab advisor and fellow founder.

Boaz Solorio is one of Project Phoenix’s dedicated volunteers. Based in the city of Glendora in Los Angeles County’s San Gabriel Valley, he first got into birding through his boss. Now, he can identify most of his area’s common native birds by call.

Solorio invited me to join him on his weekly observation—a mile long walk on a trail in his backyard—to show the rich diversity of Los Angeles’ foothills. With long strides, he chats excitedly about the yellow hooded oriole and black phoebes he saw just an hour earlier. He also mentions how one time, he completed his weekly observation while on his way to a Taco Bell—a reminder of how easy it is to think about, care about, and coexist with birds. “I’ve been so enamored by community science,” he says, referring to the tradition of science work taken on by the public that Project Phoenix is a part of. “Growing up I never knew it existed. Now I’ve realized I can really make a meaningful contribution to scientific developments. I’m so grateful for that opportunity and I’m happy to continue to do this as long as I physically can.”

“Every Saturday morning, I spot one particular Allen’s hummingbird… I am watching out for it. Sometimes, I feel like perhaps it is doing the same for me.”

While Californians wait for the end of summer, which historically has brought many of the state’s wildfires, going on my own observation walks for Project Phoenix helps me to appreciate the company I keep when we are without wildfires. Every Saturday morning, I spot one particular Allen’s hummingbird that always comes to rest on the dreamy pink cosmos flowers jutting out of my neighbor’s white fence. It is easy to spot as it squeaks and chatters, but I feel lucky every time to catch the iridescence of its green back or its rusty red and orange throat. I am watching out for it, and sometimes, due to the frequency of our encounters, I feel like perhaps it is doing the same for me.

I feel protective of my hummingbird and the red-shouldered hawk that continues to greet me with screeches in the afternoons. This is the inherent magic of birding and conservation projects like Phoenix Project: they remind us that we are in a relationship with the world. Investigating the resilience of birds during climate change-induced wildfires gets us closer to the heart of humanity’s endurance as well.

This COLORS STORY was produced in response to the red, orange, yellow ochre, and clay like umber tones in PALETTE 1, COLORS’ first seasonal palette running from October – December 2023. Head over to our YouTube channel to watch shows from the PALETTE, or read more COLORS STORIES by clicking here.

Text: Lisa Kwon
Photography: Rio Asch Phoenix