CLAWS FOR CONCERN AS BIRD NUMBERS FALL.

Byline: DANA BARTHOLOMEW

Staff Writer

ENCINO -- Jim Hardesty craned his neck to call out scores of birds twittering about the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Area.

If he saw it, or heard it, he could name it.

"Oh, western kingbird," he said, spotting an olive-gray bird with dusky wings in the bough of a nearby sycamore. Then: "Female bullock's oriole over there -- like the baseball team. Who came first?"

But what he and birders with the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society failed to find were common Southern California birds that have all but disappeared.

The National Audubon Society recently reported that bird songs of many once-familiar avian species have mostly vanished in the past 40 years.

The dramatic decreases are attributed to loss of grasslands, wetlands and healthy forests. Sprawl, energy development and industrial agriculture have also impacted common birds.

Bird lovers on a recent Sunday tour of the Valley's wildest central park were on the lookout for the birds of their youth.

Gone was the northern pintail, a paddle duck once seen in the tens of thousands across Los Angeles -- down 96 percent since 1967, according to the Audubon study.

Gone was the loggerhead shrike, a black-masked hunter dubbed the "butcher bird" for impaling buggy entrees on thorns.

And largely gone was the lark sparrow and the horned lark, birds once common to oak woodlands or grasslands gone the way of homes, condos and nonnative brush.

"Loggerhead shrikes were a regular all year 'round," said Hardesty, 70, a retired Pierce College math professor who has been eyeballing birds for 40 years. "Now we don't see them much.

"The primary loss is the loss of open habitat and the birds and animals that go with it."

Charting losses

The Audubon, which based its analysis on winter and spring bird surveys, has also charted population losses of other common national and Southern California birds, including the western meadowlark (down 60 percent), killdeer (59 percent) and house finch (53 percent).

Though not in immediate danger of extinction, the overall drop of common birds has worried bird buffs.

"This is a very bad thing," said Gary Langham, director of bird conservation for Audubon California. "It should be a wake-up call to all of the cumulative effects of habitat loss in the last 40 years."

Unless efforts are made to safeguard local habitats and wetlands, promote better farm management, support sustainable forests and combat invasive species and global warming, according to the Audubon, more common birds could be lost.

'The birds are gone'

Kris Ohlenkamp, the wiry president of the Valley's Audubon chapter, has led more than 300 Sepulveda Basin bird-watching tours.

As a hot Sunday sun rose over the wildlife area, his tour group of 10 padded down a dusty path lined with cottonwoods and willows. Bird song filled the air, mingled with the buzz of distant jets and radio-controlled airplanes.

They stopped at the basin pond, where rough-wing swallows darted above families of mallard ducks and chicks. The crowd gasped as a snowy egret rose from the rushes.

"Speaking of horned larks, this is the first place I ever saw a horned lark," said Ohlenkamp, 56, who said he has tallied 445 bird species in a lifetime of bird watching. "Beautiful bird -- yellow with horny ear tufts. Haven't seen one here since."

Wildlife photographers talk of seeing transients who steal bird eggs, loose dogs that terrorize wild birds and hikers who disturb waterfowl rookeries.

"This used to be a wildlife paradise. (Now) the birds are like, gone," said Steve Agrella, a Mission Hills photographer who reported seeing a dramatic drop in blue herons and other water birds.

Though she often sees plenty of finches and mourning doves, Chris Van Beveren misses the American kestrels that once nested near her Chatsworth home.

"Wonderful little birds. Fierce, like falcons. They do something called kiting -- looking down, hovering like a helicopter," she said, flapping her arms. "Then when they see something to eat, they fall like a bullet.

"All the homes that have been built there take up all their habitat. I haven't seen one in years.

"It makes me want to move."

dana.bartholomew(at)dailynews.com

[phone]

CAPTION(S):

8 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Kris Ohlenkamp points out birds during an Audubon Society walk at the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area. For more photos, go to dailynews.com

(2 -- color) no caption (bird watchers)

(3) Georgia Doyle watches a bird with the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society at the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer

(4 -- color) Northern Pintail

(5 -- color) Loggerhead Shrike

(6 -- color) Lark Sparrow

(7 -- color) Evening Grosbeak

(8 -- color) Horned Lark

Box:

California's vulnerable common birds

SOURCE: Natural Audubon Society