Nature Notes: Summertime Blues along Ballona Creek ~ Blue-green Grass and Metallic-blue Wings

This summer’s Alkali Rye is particularly lush, as the blue-green grasses are spreading along the Ballona Creek estuary.  It is an especially beautiful sight to witness because I know that school children from the Westside Global Awareness School (formerly known as the Westside Leadership School) helped to plant them more than five years ago alongside LA County Supervisor Don Knabe for an Earth Day event, and now this school is moving into a new era with global environmental protection being a core emphasis in its curriculum.  

A restoration of true community engagement, the creek-edge project included planting native plants indigenous to the area and to the specific geography of what was once part of the historical Ballona Lagoon.  Botanists identified the correct plants, permits were granted, and then the plants were placed in the ground lovingly by the school children arriving by bus that early spring morning.

Now my favorite grass is moving closer to the water’s edge, jumping the fence, away from the butterfly sanctuary that hundreds of volunteers helped fortify protection for on the Martin Luther King holiday the day before Barack Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States.   More fortification came later when Santa Monica’s PS#1 school and then Agape International Spiritual Center’s Earth Spirit Agape service group arrived to repair fences and keep the plants protected from dogs and humans who might not realize the importance of the plants to the ecology of the area.  

While most butterfly-loving plants like the Sea Lite and Seaside Heliotrope are growing slowly and comfortably within the confines of the children’s “Ballona Butterfly Sanctuary,” Alkali Rye has spread like a wildfire.  The knee-high bluish grass is not only moving north to the creek, it is also moving eastward, along the southern bank of the Ballona Creek estuary, sprouting up between the rocks that fortify the earthen levee. 

Alkali Rye (Leymus triticoides), a perennial herb, was nearly missed as an important botanical species at the Ballona Wetlands once, as nearby developers planned to widen Culver Blvd. through the midst of a neglected stand of this wetland indicator.   A rescue operation was undertaken as part of a legal settlement, and in 2004 some of these plants were the first to go into the ground as symbolic “restoration” by elected officials right after they’d transferred about 70 acres of land east of Lincoln Blvd. from the Controller’s office to the Dept. of Fish & Game.   Then-State Controller Steve Westly, then-State Assemblymember George Nakano and former Resources Secretary Mary Nichols planted Alkali Rye and Seaside Heliotrope in what was commonly known as “Area C” after a lengthy, citizen-led “Free Area C” campaign.

Today Alkali Rye, also called “Creeping Wild Rye” is indeed creeping through the area, growing now in several places along the Los Angeles coast in what Audubon California refers to as an Important Bird Area  - the Ballona Valley.  

And birds are here, no matter what the season – some which live here year-round, a few that come to “summer” here, more species which will arrive soon for the winter and even more which migrate through on the way to summer or winter destinations.   Besides the Important Bird Area designation, we are situated along the Pacific Flyway, a migration network of pathways that bring to us birds born in places like the Arctic, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Washington, Canada, Guatemala and Mexico.

Why do these birds come to this place along our Los Angeles coast?   The open space is attractive, but mostly they are coming for the food.  Whether it is to stop for a night or two or to stay to raise families, birds are attracted to the Ballona region by the food abundance – be it fish, crabs, shrimp, insects, or plant fruits and seeds.  Some have found the ecosystem so welcoming that they’ve set up household for more than just a “traveling through” regime, and they’ve decided to nest – an activity deemed most important to biologists, and most protected by wildlife regulators, since having offspring is what means the species can continue into the future.

One species nesting increasingly in the Ballona Valley is the Tree Swallow, a graceful bird with metallic, fluorescent, indigo blue feathers.  Tree Swallows raise families here because of the presence of light blue nest boxes you might see hanging from trees or other structures, painted by volunteers to match the sky on a sunny southern California afternoon.  Designed initially for Western Bluebirds to return, due to the size of the hole, which imitates the hole a Woodpecker would have created in the soft wood of the millions of Willows once growing along our Los Angeles creeks, these nest boxes are also the perfect size for Tree Swallows.

Parents can be viewed guarding the next box when there are young inside, and they also can be seen flying in with dinner for the small mouths calling for food.  Such signs of life are so encouraging for nature in our urban midst.   

Whether it is the blue-green blades of Alkali Rye or the Tree Swallow’s metallic-flourescent indigo wings, the “summer-time blues” of Los Angeles are surprising and waiting for view by all those with open eyes.