At first glance, the 6-foot-tall tangle of pipe wrapped in a blanket of barbed wire could be mistaken for a lot of things: a plumbing project gone terribly awry. A robot from a low-budget 1950s sci-fi flick. Maybe a piece of modern art.
But a cactus?
Scientists experimenting with ways to restore the coastal habitat of a beleaguered bird hope so. In recent weeks they've planted 15 of these homemade, green-painted contraptions on fire-scarred hills throughout Orange County's Irvine Ranch Conservancy to try to entice a declining population of cactus wrens to nest.
"There's no textbook on this. We're starting at zero and using our intuition as to what the birds might like," said Jutta Burger, a senior field ecologist for the conservancy, which manages thousands of acres of open space. "You need to think like a cactus wren."
Wildfires have wiped out countless acres of cholla and prickly pear cactus throughout coastal Southern California. Cactus wrens nest in these thorny thickets, which protect them and their eggs from predators, particularly snakes.
Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus is part of the fabric of the Southwest, a bold songbird whose scolding monotone -- char-char-char-char -- can be as grating as an "American Idol" contestant.
"Cactus wrens in the desert are super-adaptable," said Robb Hamilton, a Long Beach biologist and consultant who has studied the bird locally. "They're aggressive. You'll have cactus wrens stealing your food, getting into your car. They're somewhat of a pest out in the desert."
Along the coast, however, cactus wrens are "on the verge of collapse," Hamilton said. Development has been chewing at their habitat for decades. Now, fire is gobbling up much of the rest. And unlike their desert counterparts, coastal cactus wrens are extremely picky about where they nest, exacerbating the problem.
Cactuses under 3 feet tall are looked upon by coastal wrens with the kind of disdain a Hummer owner might feel toward a Prius. It can take 25 years for a plant to grow big enough to interest a pair of mating cactus wrens.
"We can't tell why they are so finicky," Burger said. "But we're stuck with the fact that they are."
The 1993 Laguna Canyon fire scorched 13,000 acres, including large swaths of mature cactus. A 2006 survey found that the number of cactus wrens had declined by nearly 60% in the burned area, where most of the new plants are a decade away from being large enough for nesting.
