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UCLA alumnus and researcher Jason Finley observes birds at Stone Canyon Creek. Finley works with

In a city of mostly concrete and actresses, there are people who look in mirrors and there are people who look in bushes. UCLA alumnus Jason Finley, a graduate in cognitive science, finds his excitement peering into the latter.

On Oct. 19 at 8:30 a.m. he was already out on a less-traveled path of North Campus with a camera slung across his shoulder and an ear patiently cocked. One almost wondered what he found so interesting about the noise of Sunset Blvd. traffic and the brick backside of the Anderson Building.

But soon the eye adjusts and the eardrum, numbed by incessant cell phone use, awakens to a rainbow of sound just below the din of rushing cars. It can take only one chirp, a flash of a yellow wing and suddenly, here in the middle of gray Los Angeles, there is a world humming with vibrant and unexploited detail. Ornithology, the scientific study of nature’s feathered creatures, isn’t merely for the birds.

“I’ve become fascinated with watching the birds on campus because it has really added a new level of perception to my experience of the world around me,” Finley said, moments after spotting a Yellow-rumped Warbler. “It turns out that we’re surrounded by birds most of the time and it’s something you would probably never even notice unless you started paying attention.”

Finley is one of UCLA’s campus “birders.” He runs a Web site, birdsofwestwood.com, which documents the many different varieties of birds on campus using photos, sound clips, research and a bit of empirical knowledge gained by his own explorations. Since his interest in birding matured in 2003, Finley’s life list, a term for the number of species the birder has documented, is at 100. Even Finley’s weekends and vacations are filled with bird watching anecdotes. For Finley, they’re not just something nice to look at.

“Paying attention to birds helps bring home the moral responsibility human beings have to act on behalf of the entire living world,” Finley said. “Most people don’t realize our actions affect everything. We are the only organisms known that have the ability to choose our action rationally and not just according to our instincts.”

As it turns out, with its ever-blooming trees and green lawns, UCLA’s campus is not a bad place for a birder. In fact, university campuses are listed as one of the top three places to bird watch in big cities, aside from parks and cemeteries where ample green space makes for urban bird paradise.

Several years ago, while stumbling across the Botanical Gardens and Stone Canyon Creek as an undergraduate, Finley had the idea of making the Web site. He figured it would be a small endeavor starring a minor cast of pigeons, sparrows and crows.

But Finley had underestimated UCLA’s bird diversity. Today, the Web site features over 50 species, from the rare Hermit Thrush to the notorious crumb stealing Rock Pigeon.

“We think of nature as something out there in the mountains or in the forest, but that’s not the case at all,” Finley said. “Even though we’ve built up these structures and societies around us, it hasn’t displaced nature so much as it has altered it. We’re still in nature right now and the birds make that apparent.”

Most photographs on the site are a result of long hours spent in quiet observation, with a telephoto lens on long-term loan from his sister. After graduating in 2003, Finley now works as a researcher in the cognitive science department and is applying to graduate schools, but finds he has more time now to pursue his favorite flighty creatures.

However, Finley’s recreational hobby has recently become of scientific use to UCLA research biologist Dr. Rafe Sagarin, who has been given a grant to restore the Stone Canyon Creek by reintroducing native plants and uncovering buried sections of the creek.

Creek restoration is slated to start Sunday and there is hope that careful documentation of bird populations before and after restoration will help demonstrate the impact of Sagarin’s efforts. Campus group Environmental Bruins plans on providing manpower to the restoration.

Coincidently, Environmental Bruins activities coordinator Bobby Walsh, a third-year ecology and evolutionary biology student, is a birder as well and has a life list of 218.

Finley and Walsh devised a plan to do a point count on the bird populations of Stone Canyon Creek and have posted a bird observation kit on Finley’s Web site, which includes a map and worksheet to use when documenting sightings. Students have been invited to visit the campus creek for 10 minutes and record the birds they see. Photos, description, tips and recordings of the birds’ songs are on the site to guide even the amateur through ten minutes of observation.

Finley and Walsh have encouraged all to participate, regardless of experience. Walsh, who has been on many birding trips with the Los Angeles Audubon Society, said he is quite aware of the birder stereotype, such as the middle-aged man out for adventure or the elderly lady enamored with nature. For most, it boils down to either a hobby or an obsession, but many students don’t even know they are intrigued.

“You don’t see people strolling around with binoculars all the time on campus, but there’s more bird watchers here than you think,” Walsh said. “A lot of people do it casually. They’ll feed birds from their balcony of their apartment and know what some of the names are.”

Interest in the birds on campus is as old as the campus itself. Ornithologist Dr. Loye Miller, a professor who was part of the university’s move to its present location in 1929, wrote extensively about the impact of the campus to the native birdlife from 1929 to 1944 in his book, “The Birds of Campus.” He listed over 100 different species, but since Miller’s time, many non-native plants have been introduced to campus and new buildings have been built. Consequently, in the last 50 years, the number of different bird species on campus has been divided almost in half.

“I don’t think anyone ever argued that a university campus is established with the goal of maintaining maximum native habitats,” said Kimball Garrett, ornithology collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

Garrett attended UCLA as an undergraduate and graduate biology student in the 1970s and has documented 453 bird species in the Los Angeles area.

“On the other hand, it’s always nice if possible for the development and land use to proceed in a way that maintains the natural habitat and native wildlife. Observing changes in bird populations over the decades tells you a lot about what’s going on in the environment,” Garrett said.

Native scrubs, willows and other habitats have gradually been pushed out from campus. Quails, roadrunners and other birds that rely on these habitats are no longer found on campus, while some old inhabitants such as the Bell’s Vireo are now on the endangered list . But new, richer neighbors have come to campus, such as the parakeet, attracted to the exotic trees. Garret pays particular attention to non-native bird populations in the region, such as the parrots, whose Los Angeles population is descended entirely from escaped or released pets.

Canvases of color, rebels of gravity, clues to an ecosystem’s health, birds are more than just the ordinary winged fellows they pretend to be. The more one looks, the more one sees the mystery of these “ambassadors of nature,” as Finley said.

“They are very poignant representatives of the wonder and fragility of the living world that we have become a dominant part.”

Visit Finley’s Web site at www.birdsofwestwood.com for more information about assisting in the bird survey.