Don Shirley: Pianists make history
Iris Schneider on Annie Leibovitz
Cities again barred from prosecuting the homeless. Hands across the aisle at USC. Much more.
Archive: Nature
Cities again barred from prosecuting the homeless. Hands across the aisle at USC. Much more.
Nice photo of the long-gone bathhouse and swimming facility from the Auto Club of Southern California archives.
The kittens, all females, were born to P-62 and are the first litter to be tagged in the hills north of the 101 freeway.
Trail cams placed by Robert Martinez catch a mother and three cubs in the mountains above Glendora.
The kittens were abandoned by their mother, P-42.
Even those Angelenos who like the promiscuous sprouting of non-native Mexican fan palms across the urban terrain will have to agree these are misplaced.
The two new cats are nearly grown males and face the threat of dominant males already in the Santa Monica Mountains along with the freeways, rat poison and other dangers.
The mother P-39 and both cubs died on the 118 in Santa Susana Pass since Dec. 3.
The male puma cub was struck on the 118 Freeway, which claimed P-39 last month.
A line of storms is coming toward California — just like they used to before the drought.
The mother of three mountain lion kittens was killed on the 118 freeway, the National Park Service confirmed.
Eliminating P-45 won't solve the problem of livestock and pets being killed, the National Park Service explains.
The mountain lion, one of the last adult males in the Santa Monicas, is blamed for killing more than 10 alpacas this past weekend.
Not a joke: the exhibition is sponsored by Western Exterminator.
Readers of the Southern California News Group papers are warned how to watch out for the stuff.
New mountain lion kittens have been tagged in two litters in the Santa Susana Mountains.
Bear playing in the swimming pool in Bradbury during Sunday's heat.
Brown widow spiders from Africa are becoming the region's dominant venomous spider.
It's a bit of a stretch, but why not? The spider and the singer both dress in black.
In this map, it's the mountains and the relationship of the ranges and rivers that make it special.
A male and a female were born in the western Santa Monicas in November or December.
Griffith Park mountain lion is over the mange and up to 123 pounds. Still no mate, however.
Cub of P-23 may be the only survivor from her spring litter. Watch the video and hear the young cougar squeak.
An untagged male cougar believed to be two to three years old was hit by traffic about 7:30 this morning.
He is three to four years old and the biggest Santa Monica Mountains lion that scientists have tracked since P-1. Now the question is: where did he come from?
Scientific American takes stock and concludes "there’s simply not enough land for each of the several males left to establish new territory and find mates."
This weekend's unseasonably high temperatures cinched a new record for 2015, breaking a mark that had stood for awhile.
C-146 stays close to the river in northeast LA, but the coyote recently tagged west of downtown has roamed as far as Hancock Park and back.
If you see a yellow-bellied sea snake, take pictures and report the sighting but do not handle this highly venomous creature. OK?
This is the flip side of the healthy local mountain lions in the San Gabriels I posted about earlier today.
Robert Martinez's cameras stationed in the mountains above Glendora captured two more feeding lions — in color this time.
The contest for dominance between LA's two main squirrel species is one of my favorite local wildlife situations.
Trail cameras have picked up a pack of two adult gray wolves with five pups in Siskiyou County — they call it the Shasta Pack.
My favorite police blotter item of the summer, from Marina del Rey.
He was the first male lion known to have crossed freeways north out of the Santa Monica Mountains.
This new endangered wolf, in a state that supposedly hasn't had native wolves since the 1920s, is untagged. But there is a trail camera photo.
Most of the hatchlings you will see now are either Western Fence Lizards or Side-blotched Lizards. But you never know.
Female C-144 has cubs in the Westlake district. Male C-145 ranges around the Silver Lake area. There's a new urban wildlife blog too.
Remember the post in March about the discovery of 30 new fly species in LA yards?
P-41, an adult male weighing 130 pounds, was tagged and released on May 7 in the mountain range above Burbank and Glendale.
How long P-22 was under the house in Los Feliz, the lion cubs who crossed the 101 freeway and how many pets have been found at lion kills in the Santa Monica Mountains.
P-32 is the first male to successfully disperse from the mountains across the freeway. His sister did it a month earlier.
Before wild animals had cute Twitter accounts, the sighting of a cougar in the hills of LA caused a much different response.
Greenery has returned, but few bird species are spotted in the reserve where the Army Corps abruptly tore out trees and habitat in 2012.
During the night he left the Los Feliz crawl space where he waited out the media scrum. The cougar has been tracked to a Griffith Park canyon where he is fine.
As of Tuesday morning the cat may have moved on from Glendower Avenue.
Expect a day of rain on Tuesday with snow above 4,500 feet. NWS expects about up to an inch of rain.
This level of previously unknown biodiversity surprised scientists and makes them wonder: what other mystery species are living in our backyards?
Scientist Grace Peng reminds us there was a time when the Pacific inundated California with rivers of free water from the sky.
It's just the second time researchers have spotted a lion successfully crossing the freeway — and the first to leave the Santa Monicas.
Already, this year has seen the most stranding of emaciated sea lions in memory. Warmer waters driving away the food is suspected.
A very wet "atmospheric river event" is pointed at Northern California with an estimated arrival of later this week. Hey, we'll take it.
The gray wolf that roamed Northern California and his pack of a mate and cubs now have a federal designation.
Griffith Park's urban mountain lion has recovered from mange and poisoning. But what about the Twitter photo of a possible second lion up in the canyons?
Scientists think they know now what has killed millions of starfish along the Pacific coast, though they aren't so sure why. The destruction has been quite visible in tide pools.
Robert Martinez's camera above Glendora captures family of cougars in the daylight — followed by a night visitor.
The cougar kittens that were extracted from under a car in Burbank in 2011 — saved from curious residents who were poking at them with broomsticks — now live at a sanctuary in Riverside. An update.
By-the-wind sailors are related to the Portuguese man-of-war but without the painful sting. Here's a primer from Heal the Bay as the strange Pacific wildlife year continues.
Every summer day at dusk, thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats blast out from under a bridge beside an orange grove in Riverside County.
Two whale watchers on an inflatable boat were thrown into the sea and rescued. Plus: 5 whales and dolphins to watch for this season.
New trail camera video of P-22 shows the young male cougar is mostly over the mange that alarmed researchers earlier in the year.
On Saturday afternoon I came upon dozens of brown pelicans diving frantically into the shallow water on the edge of the Marina del Rey entrance channel, obviously enjoying some kind of unseen fish bonanza.
New mountain lion photos from the naturalists who monitor the population in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The images were taken near Malibu Creek State Park when the cubs were 11 months old.
Credit for the headline to the High Country News, which notes that "with each passing day it seems more certain: 2014 is going to be an El Niño year, and probably a big one."
Remember those stunning photos of P-22 in National Geographic? "He doesn't look like that anymore," National Park Service researcher Seth Riley says now.
Based on recent developments, some scientists think this event may rival the record El Niño event of 1997-1998. If that does happen, 2015 would almost be guaranteed to set a record for the warmest year on Earth, says a report.
The National Park Service said Thursday that the cub was untagged — not one of the cougars they have been following. Which is interesting.
The Natural History Museum's entomology people give the intriguing details. "Some ant decapitating flies, like zombie hunters, aim for the head..."
Coming up on three years since the catastrophic Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, officials say flatly there is no threat to food or beachgoers. No matter what you might see on Facebook.
Scientists on Sunday discovered twin calves that were conjoined. They did not survive. "It might be the first documented case of Siamese twin gray whales," blogs the outdoors writer Pete Thomas.
Remember those disturbing photos last year of mysteriously malnourished sea lions at rescue centers? An alarming drop in sardine schools may be a big reason. There are all kinds of reasons to worry about the sardines, it turns out.
State hydrologists report today they found more bare ground than snow in the first Sierra snowpack measurement of the year. That's bad. Here's why no storms are getting through to California.
Quite a photo over at The Eastsider LA. As onlookers watched, the hawk laid there unmoving for several minutes while the snake unraveled itself and slithered away.
Anchovies beget sea lions, pelicans, dolphins and now the whales. Lots of them. Meanwhile: South Bay paddlers are told to stop bothering the great white sharks.
Like something from a bad B science fiction movie, the sudden appearance of Jerusalem crickets has caused fear and freaking out among humans who know little about this big-headed, bumbling and lumbering creature.
Steve Winter's night photos of a deer, a bobcat, a coyote and a human out in the brush — as well as P-22 in front of the Hollywood sign — accompany the December story, now online.
Los Angeles photographer Sungjin Ahn has captured some marvelous images of Joshua trees against the desert and the sky and put them into a lovely Vimeo time lapse.
Analysis of the mountain lion struck and killed while crossing the freeway in Agoura Hills in early October shows that it came from outside the current Santa Monica Mountains cougar population.
The key words here are rotting balls of fish flesh and corpse wax. Bon appetit.
The UC Santa Barbara researchers who dissected tissue from the mysterious 18-foot oatfish that washed up last month on Catalina Island found some interesting parasites along for the ride.
The newest northern white-cheeked gibbon — born Monday at the Santa Clarita center — will be on display at this Saturday's open house and fundraiser.
Mountain lion photographed during the day in the San Gabriels. More on Griffith Park's P-22. And it's tarantula mating season, so step lively.
The first webcam to stream live video of wild California condors — the largest land birds in North America — warns that the feeding scenes from the Big Sur wilderness can be graphic.
Heal the Bay says the female Stejneger's Beaked Whale was covered in shark bites, but there was no apparent indication of how it had died.
They take their time about it and appear to be settling in for a long night or perhaps two. Robert Martinez sure has a knack for putting his trail cameras in the right place.
It has been a big week for the blue-footed booby since last week's sighting. "A bevy of boobies," quips the website SoCal Wild.
Forget P-23. Robert Martinez's trail camera caught a lion stashing a newly killed deer just minutes before he got there. His cams have caught local cougars, bears, foxes and more — but this time, he says, "I'm almost certain I was being watched."
The burn area now covers 301 square miles, but the spread is slowing and officials predict full containment by Sept. 10. Closures continue within Yosemite National Park.
P-23 was captured and DNA-tested in the Santa Monica Mountains as a newborn last summer. Newly dispersed from her mother, P-23 was photographed eating a deer kill on the pavement of Mulholland Highway on Sunday morning.
The Rim fire in and around the west side of Yosemite National Park jumped Monday to 160,980 charred acres, with new evacuations outside the park. But firefighters were able to declare 20% containment.
The sad sight of a 42-foot fin whale washing up alive on Stinson Beach in Marin County, then dying in front of onlookers, has turned into a rare opportunity for scientists. They don't usually get to study the endangered fin whales in this way.
Kevin Martin, the blogging weatherman who took his mother (and her car) to Death Valley on Sunday, said he found temperatures a few degrees higher than the official reading of 129 degrees recognized by the National Weather Service. His thermometer read 135.5 degrees at Badwater Basin, the low point of North America. But there's no official NWS station there.
A Corona meteorologist and blogger is heading into Death Valley National Park for this weekend's heat siege, betting on the come that the temperature will set a new world record. The old record is 134 degrees.
Back in May, a possibly ailing young sea lion climbed aboard a boat two miles off of Newport Beach in Orange County. He (the video shooters think it was male) climbed up on the seat and spent an hour nuzzling the legs of his new friends.
Young barn owls and an uncollared mountain lion on video (inside) in the wilds of Orange County.
Meg Sullivan and Steve Roe came home Sunday to find the agave in the front yard beginning to sprout the big reproductive thingy in the middle. Same for a nearby plant: two century plants sprouting at the same time. Anyone want to take pictures?
The mystery of the ill sea lion pups overwhelming rescue centers in Southern California has been upgraded to an official "unusual mortality event" by the National Marine Fisheries Service. More sick pups have shown up on local beaches so far in 2013 than in many previous years combined.
The Orange County whale watch boat that has been providing lots of great video of offshore sea life today has posted footage of a bottlenose dolphin appearing to swim with a dead calf on its back, while other dolphins in the pod slowly accompany the first.
People up in the Eastern Sierra noticed recently that the sky was kind of hazy, and the usual culprit — dust from the Owens Lake bed that the Los Angeles DWP dried up years ago — could not be blamed. Turns out the haze was caused by suspended particles from "a massive dust event last week in the Gobi Desert" that rode the jet stream across the Pacific.
On Sunday, a male and female did the courtship dance for several hours alongside and under a Dana Point whale-watch boat and other craft full of amazed onlookers. In the video, the whales even appear to rub against a sailboat and set it to rocking.
The first gray wolf to roam California in 90 years has crossed back into Oregon — again. If he's headed back to his old pack, he'll find things have changed.
Residents along the beach in Santa Monica and Venice complained early Sunday of a foul smell that seemed to be coming from the ocean. Readings on the water detected higher than typical amounts of odorless methane, so go figure.
This whale rubs on the boat, rolls over to be caressed and even closes its eyes — only thing missing is the purr. But really, kids should not stick their hands into the mouth of a whale, baby or not. Watch inside.
A female great white shark tagged in 2012 off Guadalupe Island, which lies about 165 miles west of Ensenada in Baja California, has made her way north toward the islands off Southern California. It's apparently the first time a tagged Guadalupe Island shark has been tracked into the local waters.
Sick and hungry sea lion pups are showing up almost daily at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro — a dozen on Saturday alone. What is afflicting the young sea lions is unknown.
It seems as if there's a video-worthy dolphin, whale or orca encounter off the Southern California every week or so now. This "stampede" by leaping dolphins is pretty impressive.
On Tuesday afternoon, volunteers at the ACS/LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center spotted a mother and three orca calves patrolling off the PV peninsula. Nice underwater video.
A portion of the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve was cleared of trees and brush in an abrupt move by the Army Corps of Engineers that caught the area's birdwatchers and volunteer caretakers by surprise. Reacting to an outrcy, the Army Corps halted work for more discussion.
National Park Service biologists affixed tracking devices recently on male and female kittens born to one of the adult female lions already being tracked through the mountain range. They were fathered by a well-known lion, P-12, who unfortunately also fathered the cubs' mother.
DNA testing that links the young lion to cats north of the 101 freeway suggests "a rare bright spot for a group of animals that is suffering from an extreme lack of genetic diversity," the National Park Service says.
California's first wild wolf since the 1920s roamed east across U.S. highway 395 on the Madeline Plains north of Susanville in Lassen County sometime in the past ten days, then seemed to slow the "dispersal" quest that began last September in northern Oregon.
The Oregon gray wolf that entered California on Dec. 28 has been tracked moving through Lassen County and crossing several roads and highways.
OR7 is ready for his closeup. Or he was back on November 14, when the first gray wolf known to roam in lower Oregon and California in many decades was likely photographed by a hunter's trail camera.
At least one of the family groups videotaped up close off the Southern California coast last month was back this weekend. Maybe they live here now.
OR7 crossed the state border yesterday, becoming the first gray wolf known to roam wild in California since the 1920s.
The pair of 5-pound cougars discovered beneath a parked car on Orange Grove Avenue apparently had not eaten in two weeks. They were taken to the California Wildlife Center in...
Wildlife trackers in Oregon have followed a lone male gray wolf on a 730-mile trek across the state, south toward the border with California. "He could be in Yreka in two days if he wanted to be," a California fish and game official says.
The pod of 12 killer whales logged previously in British Columbia was spotted off Ventura on Friday, off Rancho Palos Verdes on Saturday and off Newport Beach today.
"Man, was it *cold* up there on the bluffs!," says Venice photographer Anthony Citrano.
Tonight's total lunar eclipse begins at 4:45 a.m., reaches its peak about 6 a.m., and is expected to create a deep red shade on the moon with a hint of turquoise. NASA explains in the video.
A little rain finished off the job in San Pedro's White Point neighborhood, apparently.
People spotted the glowing object moving west to east as far away as Phoenix.
A contributor at Leimert Park Beat posted a brief video of the parrots in his coral tree.
The weather geek who sent me this photo loves the wind vortices evident in the clouds off the Southern California coast this week. I just see a nice image.
Another great find by Boing Boing: a mesmerizing video of plastic sheeting from a Bavarian strawberry field dancing in the sky on thermal air currents. Just watch it.
The science story of the day is that one of the basic assumptions about life on Earth — and potentially elsewhere (get it?) — has been upended by a discovery at Mono Lake, the briny prehistoric lake in the Eastern Sierra.
It's been almost three years since we've passed along any news of Reggie, the alligator (first thought to be a caiman) that eluded capture in Machado Lake in Harbor City for so long — until May 24, 2007.
Our post this week on the lament of the ant fighters brought some interesting suggestions — lots and lots of cloves, for instance — and a reminder from the county agricultural commissioner that red imported fire ants are here and causing trouble.
I'm hearing from people around L.A. about epic indoor invasions of ants. Driven inside by the rain, I suspect — but please feel welcome to educate me with better theories.
Rico Gagliano, a reporter for "Marketplace" and co-host of "The Dinner Party Download" podcast, sent along this photo of a tree that blew down during this morning's wind gusts. No...
One thing we've all learned about KTLA reporter Lu Parker is that she loves animals, and especially her rescue dog Monkey. They'll be featured in an upcoming photo spread in...
Channel 5 reporter (and Villaraigosa main squeeze) Lu Parker just tweeted that she has a new blog post up. It's a Christmas gift suggestion, and like much of her online...
Somebody had to represent Highland Park's favorite son in Yosemite Valley, and LA Observed was honored to make the introduction. That's Chicken Boy at Lower Yosemite Falls. Below is also...
The feds have formally removed pelicans from the endangered species list, hailing the bird's recovery as evidence that the species law works. Brown pelicans were declared endangered in 1970, when...
Q: What's more bizarre than the Los Angeles Times having a blog for the paper's most inveterate staff animal lovers to talk about pets, animal causes and, of course, dogs...
A coyote nabbed Jessica Simpson's dog:And her fans are rallying:Well, maybe not all of them:...
A detection dog working with inspectors found a package at a FedEx depot in Sacramento that contained at least 100 live Asian citrus psyllids, including juveniles and adults, the L.A....
Those Asian citrus psyllids trapped in Orange County last week tested negative for the greening disease that has wiped out citrus industries around the world. But one of the insects...
Sad news at Chicken Corner. Rosie, who decorates the blog's banner, has gone to the big farm in the country at age fourteenish. "Rosie's dog friends included Oscar the Dog...
While crackdowns on counterfeit clothes and DVDs get more attention, Ed Fuentes reports at Blogdowntown that "the Fashion District's illegal animal trade continues unabated." The photo is by Fuentes. According...
News and notes are hidden after the jump. Also see today's Mark Lacter morning headlines at LA Biz Observed, and follow Mark and Kevin on Twitter....
The City of Los Angeles loves to designate historic-cultural monuments, from pallets stacked in an eccentric guy's backyard in Van Nuys (since thrown away) to actual significant buildings. Even street...
The smell of rotting flesh is wafting again at the Huntington Library's tropical conservatory in San Marino. Star-News: After keeping botanists on tenterhooks for more than two weeks, the giant...
Zach Behrens at LAist has gotten together a map showing the overlapping ranges claimed by the seven mountain lions believed to still inhabit the Santa Monicas, Santa Susanas and Simi...
The young migrating gray whale is spending much of its time in the main Marina del Rey channel. KABC's Michael Linder says you can often spot the whale from the...
Two California men were indicted today on federal charges that they illegally smuggled Asian songbirds into the country. One man was stopped at LAX upon return from Vietnam and found...
Tuk, a 16 year old pileated gibbon, has given birth at the Gibbon Conservation Center in Saugus. They can't yet tell the new arrival's sex — it's clinging tightly to...
"In spring, long, bristle-like stamens cluster together in intensely red, 6-inch long, hanging, bottlebrush-shaped cylinders that look like they would make doing the dishes fun," writes Pieter Severynen at the...
'Tis the season for babies in the Los Angeles wildlife realm, and thus babies in distress. Mary Cummins, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator and president of Animal Advocates, collected this...
Dogs, horses, rabbits, cats, turtles, birds — even a few lizards and a snake — got along famously at Saturday's traditional Blessing of the Animals at Olvera Street and...
A new city proposed on the Tejon Ranch at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley — or viewed another way, on the northern edge of SoCal's sprawl —...
Author John Shannon says he smelled something burning while driving home today. Under the hood of his car he found this bird's nest smoldering atop the engine. His ride had...
After an adult male opposum was shot in the head in Van Nuys on Saturday, it required the neighborhood kids, an Animal Services officer, Valley Wildlife Care in Woodland Hills...
Long Beach City College is awash in bunny rabbits, "big, fat, brazen ones who will run up to strangers and beg for food," says the blogger at UnHip L.A. She...
Syd Lovelace and Booda on a paddleboard off Will Rogers State Beach this evening, with Catalina in the background. "Syd and Booda (who is a rescue dog) are Venice residents...
Pasadena plans to tear out 43 mature shade trees along Colorado Boulevard, Lake and Los Robles and replace them with shadeless, soulless fan palms (yuck) and gingkos. The ficus trees...
My segment on the air at 4:44 p.m. centers on the ailment afflicting brown pelicans, with a little mention of the SS Catalina meeting its demise. It's about icons of...
Decades after the damage from DDT almost destroyed the Southern California brown pelican population, something is causing the coastal birds to get sick and turn up distressed in unusual places:...
A two-foot-long alligator was captured this morning on 4th Avenue in Venice. It's being held at a city animal shelter. That's a long way from Reggie's old prowling grounds, and...
The 25-year-old woman was running near the Griffith Park carousel on Tuesday morning when she got nipped by a coyote. LAT...
Excellent piece by Max Taves in the LA Weekly on elderly identical twin sisters in Pacific Palisades who "had spent years fanatically feeding the Palisades’ rat population. Although the full...
A San Marino home has about a million bees buzzing around it — in the walls and in the house — and honey is oozing out of the walls in...
Who knew? I'm told, by Los Angeles poet Richard Beban, that this morning's verse about opossums was no lone wolf. He says there is something of a cult of local...
In The Oldest Living Thing in L.A., Larry Levis observes an opossum trying to cross Wilshire and Santa Monica. Sample: A few steps forward, then back away from the breath...
L.A.'s most famous hard-to-catch alligator slipped out of his enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo last night, but was re-incarcerated after a short walk on the wild side. Donna Littlejohn...
Garden expert Lili Singer acknowledges that the opossums that roam Los Angeles at night look like bloated rats, but she's a fan nonetheless. The first Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) was...
Machado Lake's alligator in residence could be seen a lot yesterday, drifting along the surface, sunning and ignoring the audience of onlookers and photographers. "Reggie was doing everything but the...
It's in New York, not here, but I thought you'd want to see this video....
Designer and blogger Marc Grobman (the guy campaigning to de-uglify Donald Sterling's Times ads) became so curious about the crows invading his Santa Monica neighborhood each winter that he went...
Twenty gray whales have been spotted traveling south across Santa Monica Bay this week, one has been poking its head up at the Redondo Beach pier, and "Immense pods of Common Dolphins are also being spotted offshore, feeding on the abundant bait fish (probably anchovies)."
Thick, soupy fog used to cover parts of Los Angeles a few dozen times a year and interfere with traffic at LAX. Not so much anymore, and a Cal State...
USA Today jumps on the palm tree story, pointing out that demand in Las Vegas and Arizona has pushed prices to $20,000 for some Canary Island palms while noting that...
The Daily Breeze gathers together all the reports of big cat sightings through the years on the Palos Verdes peninsula — and official assurances that nothing has ever been confirmed...
There's no denying that palm trees are an iconic feature of the Los Angeles landscape, despite being non-native and ecologically almost worthless. In this week's CityBeat (out today), David Davin...
Every summer it seems the whale boat captains talk up sightings of blue whales out in the channel. This year Channel 4 has video....
Seven members of a family hiking at Hansen Dam in Lake View Terrace had to be rescued by LAFD helicopter Sunday night after becoming stuck in mud and sinking "nearly...
The Daily Breeze, perhaps a little hopefully, reports that on Day 327 of the great South Bay Gator Watch it's still possible that Reggie is lurking somewhere in Machado Lake....
Michael Walker at Laurel Canyon the Book hopes the cat run over on Barham Boulevard wasn't the one that had been using his lower deck. He also points to a...
Since we're talking cats this week, a reader in Glendale passes along more sightings: No photographic evidence; but up here on the shoulder of the Verdugo Hills (right across the...
Wednesday's Morning Buzz reprinted an email from the president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council warning residents that a dog had fallen prey to the mountain lion (or lions)...
See it full size at blogger Bad Mom, Good Mom's photo queue, on the recommendation of Angeleno-in-exile Virginia Postrel....
The May cover of Los Angeles pushes 52 Dream Weekends, but the talker story of the month is Jesse Katz's piece on the pets we kill and Ed Boks, newly...
Reggie, the alligator set loose last year in Harbor City's Machado Lake, hasn't been seen since October. Gator watchers are pretty sure he's still there, though, and will be waking...
Pink flowers of the floss-silk tree are the autumnal corollary of spring's lavender jacaranda blooms that color Los Angeles streets. Tim McGarry at Angels and Vagabonds blogs an appreciation, along...
Well they finally caught Reggie this morning—or did they? CNN and AP posted stories this morning that the Monster of Machado Lake was wrestled into custody by the same Colorado...
Somehow, I'm not surprised by this news. A second "crocodilian" has been spotted near Harbor City, this time in a flood control channel that feeds into Machado Lake. That's the...
The Florida gator-nabbers who were summoned to save Machado Lake from the terror of Reggie have called it quits for now—just like the Colorado wranglers before them. The Floridians didn't...
That elusive alligator is still loose in Machado Lake, but two men suspected of releasing the gator in Harbor Regional Park two months ago were arrested today. Turns out that...
Councilwoman Janice Hahn is getting all territorial about the reclusive reptile that is putting Machado Lake and Harbor City on the pop culture map. A Florida theme park has come...
I confess I haven't been monitoring all of the media buzz, so the first name I've seen given to the Menace of Machado Lake comes from Dan Glaister, L.A. correspondent...
Pretty soon the wily alligator or caiman—take your pick—that is vacationing at Machado Lake is going to get a cute name and media immortality. He or she eluded the hunters...
On Day Six, they couldn't agree whether it's a caiman or an alligator. Nor could the barefoot gator wranglers from Colorado trap the tortilla-gobbling, raw chicken-eschewing monster in a big...
On Day 5 of the Great Caiman Hunt in Harbor City, experts fly in (from Colorado, not South America) and a woman tells the Breeze that she reported a sighting...
Kids down in Harbor City aren't fazed by the six- to eight-foot caiman that has moved into Machado Lake—they threw tortillas at the pseudo-croc. Well why not? Authorities haven't been...
His landlord sold Tony Tocco's Lawndale house for condos, and now Tocco has to find a home for his unusual menagerie. He's got the usual dog, cat, snake and crows...
LA.com says they have caught the San Francisco Chronicle's website in some premature gossiping. SFGate's Daily Dish column has a colorful item about a PETA disruption during lunch today at...
Walking in L.A. took a stroll this month along, over and in the Los Angeles River in Burbank and Glendale. He has put up a batch of photos and...
A pod of six to eight blue whales — the biggest animals on Earth — has been feeding in the Catalina Channel off Point Fermin this week, a story in...
The month or so each spring when the jacarandas are blooming is my favorite time in Los Angeles. The splashes of color have seemed exceptional this year, at least on...
Professor emeritus Ralph Shaffer has been trying without success to get Times writers to stop referring to Los Angeles as a desert, climate-wise. Simply put, he says it rains too much for the coastal plain to qualify as a desert.
West Nile virus, now confirmed in Los Angeles County....
New at LA Observed
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
