Dave in LA

One of the squirrels I found wandering around the gardensI took a trip to the Huntington Gardens with Liza a while back (before this moving/no internet disaster happened, more on that soon). Normally the admission for this beautiful park is $20 or so, but Liza and I had the hookup, so we got in free despite the fact that this afternoon would’ve easily been worth the cost of admission. I’ll post more of my favorite photos from the trip later, but I wanted to first show some really cool ones I got of the locally famous Pasadena Parrots. From Wikipedia:

Theories and myths abound on how these parrots came to claim Pasadena and surrounding towns as their home. A heavily accepted story by longtime residents of the area is that they were part of the stock at Simpson’s Nursery on East Colorado Blvd. in the Lamanda Park area. The nursery was burned down in 1959, and the parrots were thereby released to forage in the lush Pasadena area. It is also possible that some parrots moved northward from their normal range in central and northern Mexico as human habitation in the Pasadena area created artificial habitat in which the parrots could survive. Among their favorite foods are the berry kernels of the cedar trees that grow in great abundance around Pasadena.

We were strolling through the gardens when we heard some loud birds up in one of the larger trees, here’s the highlights from my brief sighting. Click to bigify. The last picture are some friends of the parrots, hanging out together.