Birds

Hard-core Harry Potter fans who devoured the books, camped out for the movies and trekked through the theme park now have a new way to relive the boy wizard's adventures. PHOTOS: Making of Harry Potter studio tour Debuting Saturday, the Making of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes tour at theWarner Bros.studios in England will let wizards, mudbloods and muggles pull back the curtain on the movie-making secrets of the most successful film series of all time. Located 20 miles outside of London, the three-hour self-guided tour will take visitors past sets, props, costumes, models and special effects exhibits from the eight "Harry Potter" movies.

Indiana Pacers President Larry Bird was voted the NBA's executive of the year on Wednesday, becoming the first person to win that award, plus the most valuable player and coach of the year honors. The Pacers went 42-24 and are tied 1-1 with Miami in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Bird's moves to strengthen the team during the off-season included promoting Frank Vogel from interim to head coach and signing starting forward David West . He acquired point guard George Hill in a draft-night deal with San Antonio, and traded for Lou Amundson and Leandro Barbosa to fortify the bench for the Pacers, who earned the No. 3 seeding in the East and had the fifth-best record in the league.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

The signs of penguins in love were unmistakable at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach on Monday: puffing their chests, standing on tiptoes while clicking their beaks together, belting out donkey-like brays. The colony of 13 Magellanic penguins, which recently moved from holding pens to a new $1.5-million exhibit that opens to the public Thursday, has seethed with courting rituals since the arrival of breeding season. One pair is already tending to a newly hatched chick.

HERE'S THE experience I'm always on the prowl for: a simple, golden, tender rotisserie chicken, bursting with juice, lifted off its skewer when it's just cooked and placed in my hands. I run home and pull apart the warm, delicate meat with my bare fingers. A bite of baguette, a dab of mayo or a drop of melted butter. Heaven. The magic of this classic spit-roasted bird is in its simplicity -- a basic seasoning, a well-timed turn on a skewer and an immediate transfer of the just-finished bird to the customer.

Birds do it, bees do it, even wildebeests and zebus do it. And during the "Valentine's Day Sex Tour" at Santa Ana Zoo today, visitors will learn exactly how animals court and mate in a captive setting. Wild stuff? Well, the event is for adults only, but zoo curator Connie Sweet said she wouldn't go so far as to slap an R-rating on the tour. Call it PG-13.

For those who bring a ghoulish curiosity to their scrutiny of Southern California's environmental decay, I offer the case of the raven. The evolution of the raven to Frankenstein status may not be a major milepost of our decline, but it's a sign of something. You might put the raven in the same league with the solemya clam. Connoisseurs of this sort of thing will recall that the solemya clam was discovered thriving in the sewage sludge at the bottom of Santa Monica Bay.

To work in the file room of the downtown criminal courts building is to be a librarian of evils. Its shelves hold the official records of rapes, murders, robberies and thousands of other offenses prosecuted in the courthouse and the clerks there know the ugliness of society by name and case number. It is perhaps not surprising then that on his lunch hour, an employee named Marcos Saldana was drawn to a scene of natural beauty. It was a ravens' nest on the ledge of a building across Temple Street and Saldana watched each spring as the same pair of birds rebuilt the nest, hatched their chicks and taught them to fly. "Birds are beautiful," Saldana said, standing at his usual vantage point, a window in the L.A. courthouse's 13th floor snack bar. "They can fly away and go wherever they want, whereas we are stuck to the ground.

The bait was set. A small wire cage containing a mouse and a sparrow sat in a field, easily seen by any of the sharp-eyed red-tailed hawks in a nearby grove of eucalyptus trees. Within 20 minutes, one of the large birds swooped in for a late breakfast and was snared. An elated biologist, Pete Bloom, had one more startled young bird to measure, weigh and hold firmly, carefully avoiding its sharp talons while he wrapped an aluminum identification band around its leg.

Tour boat captain Dan Salas radioed for help Saturday as soon as he noticed a drowning baby seabird in the rolling swell beside a barge anchored in Long Beach Harbor. Three minutes later, Long Beach lifeguards arrived in a patrol boat and set to work, providing the 20 tourists aboard Salas' 80-foot vessel, Kristina, with a rare view of an avian rescue operation half a mile offshore.

If you know anything at all about Del Mar, it's that the seaside town north of San Diego is the place to play the ponies. The horses aren't the only thoroughbreds in the track's history; you'll hear it connected to such names as Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, jockey Willie Shoemaker and, my favorite, Seabiscuit. But I'd encourage a Del Mar visit any time except the July 18-Sept. 5 racing season, just for the peace and quiet. The bed. I was here for a family wedding at L'Auberge del Mar Resort & Spa (1540 Camino del Mar; [800]

To work in the file room of the downtown criminal courts building is to be a librarian of evils. Its shelves hold the official records of rapes, murders, robberies and thousands of other offenses prosecuted in the courthouse and the clerks there know the ugliness of society by name and case number. It is perhaps not surprising then that on his lunch hour, an employee named Marcos Saldana was drawn to a scene of natural beauty. It was a ravens' nest on the ledge of a building across Temple Street and Saldana watched each spring as the same pair of birds rebuilt the nest, hatched their chicks and taught them to fly. "Birds are beautiful," Saldana said, standing at his usual vantage point, a window in the L.A. courthouse's 13th floor snack bar. "They can fly away and go wherever they want, whereas we are stuck to the ground.

As a little girl in Ohio in the mid-1800s, Genevieve "Gennie" Jones would accompany her country doctor father in his buggy as he visited patients. Along the way they'd discuss the natural world, which turned into a lifelong passion. Then in 1876, consumed with heartache from a broken engagement, Jones traveled to the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Here she viewed John James Audubon's masterpiece, "Birds of America. " Inspired by the beautiful watercolor drawings, she returned home with a new sense of purpose, determined to create a companion book illustrating birds' nests and eggs.

Farther Away Essays Jonathan Franzen Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 322 pp., $26 I didn't much like Jonathan Franzen's essay "Farther Away" when I read it a year ago in the New Yorker. A complicated mishmash of a piece, it seeks to juxtapose the author's visit to the South Pacific island of Masafuera, renamed in the 1960s "for Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish seaman whose tale of solitary living … was probably the basis for Daniel Defoe's novel 'Robinson Crusoe,'" with his thoughts on Defoe and on the novel, and, most important, the effort to process the death of his close friend and sometime literary rival David Foster Wallace, who hanged himself in 2008.

The first official Angry Birds Land will open Saturday at Sarkanniemi Adventure Park in Finland with rides and games themed to the popular smart phone app. PHOTOS: Angry Birds Land at European theme park Located about two hours north of Helsinki, Sarkanniemi has partnered with Finnish-based gamemaker Rovio to bring the virtual world of battling birds and pigs into the fantasy world of a theme park. With more than 500 million downloads, the iPhone and Android cellphone game challenges players to launch birds at towering pig fortresses in hopes of destroying the defensive structures and recovering pilfered eggs.

NEW YORK -- Warning of a possible disaster if something isn't done soon, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is pushing lawmakers to make it easier for wildlife officials to cull Canada geese and other birds near New York City airports, where two jet-bird collisions have been reported in the last week. “We cannot afford to sit back and wait for a catastrophe to occur before cutting through bureaucratic red tape between federal agencies,” Gillibrand said Wednesday as she proposed  the legislation , which focuses on the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge near  John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Iris Schneider's comparison of a night heron to a gull tells me that she does not know much about birds, which is OK ("Kids' 'Paradise' in San Diego," Weekend Escape, Feb. 17). But comparing this handsome bird's beak to Barbra Streisand's nose is not only ignorant but petty and mean. SUSAN HUTSON Agoura

NEW YORK -- A Jet Blue flight headed for Florida made an emergency landing minutes after takeoff from a New York-area airport when it collided with birds in the air, the second such incident in six days in a region where birds forced a jet to ditch into the Hudson River three years ago. Nobody was injured in Tuesday night's incident involving JetBlue Flight 571, which left Westchester Airport just north of New York City at 6:45 p.m. with...

Among the highlights of my conversation with NBA senior photographer Andrew Bernstein: How one of his photos is featured in the playbill of the "Magic/Bird" Broadway show. Why he most cherishes shooting the 1985 NBA Finals. How he managed to arrange photo shoots with Johnson and Bird even moments before a game. Bernstein's take on the relationship between Johnson and Bird. The difficulties in shooting game pictures featuring Johnson and Bird. RELATED: Phil Jackson discusses 'Journey to the Ring' NBA photographer Andrew Bernstein on 'Journey to the Ring' Lakers center Andrew Bynum to have innovative knee procedure in Germany     Andy Bernstein's Magic Johnson, Larry Bird photos featured in play