Audubon Program: California’s Naturalized Birds

Southern California’s Other Avifauna: Trends, Traits, and Troubles of Our Naturalized Bird Species (illustrated) is the topic of Audubon’s monthly program on Thursday, May 2. Free to the public, the program will be held at the Fleischmann Auditorium at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

Having lived in the “outdoor aviary” of Los Angeles County nearly all his life, Kimball Garrett learned early on that non-native (“exotic”) bird species were a real and growing part of the region’s avifauna. Much of his field work since the early 1990s has been dedicated to learning more about these novel components of our birdlife.

The California Bird Records Committee has admitted 17 non-native bird species to the official California state bird list, and several other exotics are waiting in the wings. Many birders express disdain for such species, and conservation biologists are justifiably concerned about their actual or potential negative impacts on native species and natural habitats. But they are undeniably part of our avifauna and deserve our attention and monitoring, if not our approval.

Kimball Garrett received his undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley and did graduate work at UCLA before being hired as Ornithology Collections Manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in 1982, a position he held until his retirement in 2022 Garrett is a charter member and Past President of Western Field Ornithologists and a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society. He is a member of the California Bird Records Committee, past member of the American Birding Association’s Checklist Committee; serves a Regional co-editor (with Guy McCaskie) for Southern California for North American Birds and an eBird reviewer for Los Angeles County. He has authored or co-authored some 65 scientific publications including Birds of Southern California, Status and Distribution (1981),  Field Guide to Warblers of North America (1997) with co-author Jon Dunn and Birds of Southern California (2012; new edition due in 2024) with co-authors Jon Dunn and Brian Small. He was also co-author of the Los Angeles County Breeding Bird Atlas (2016).