Wildlife

An engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge was walking across a bridge to work about 8:45 a.m. Jan. 16 when he spotted something moving in the creek below. At first he thought it was a coyote, but as he got closer he could make out the low build, hulking forequarters and tawny fur. Mountain lion. The engineer, Matthew Dickie, moved to grab his camera, and the animal crouched and froze. Other people walking to work noticed and peered over the bridge too. I'll be damned.

California's peregrine falcons, once driven to the edge of extinction by the pesticide DDT, now are contaminated with record-high levels of other toxic chemicals that may threaten them again. State scientists have found that peregrines in Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco contain the highest levels of flame retardants found in any living organism worldwide.

An agreement to protect wildlife was announced Friday between the toll road agency and a state agency on the proposed extension of an Orange County toll road, a controversial link that would cut through a popular state park and famed surf spot. Proponents said the agreement helps breathe new life into the proposed toll road extension, which has divided politicians, environmentalists and transportation planners for years. Opponents dismissed it as insignificant.

Adam Deem was driving through burned brush in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest west of Redding when he spotted a black bear cub teetering oddly in the middle of the road. It was Thursday morning, weeks into the state's fire siege. Deem, a forester with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, grabbed a camera from the back seat and took a few photos. Then he noticed that the cub's fur was singed. Its paws looked badly burned.

The Orange County Zoo is not your usual menagerie of lions, tigers and bears. There are no majestic animals from the African savanna, no awe-inspiring creatures from Arctic reaches. Rather, here on this 5-acre wooded spread at the base of the Santa Ana Mountains are 60 mostly hard-luck animals who have had run-ins, bad breaks and unfortunate entanglements with humankind.

The equivalent of nine glasses of wine a night is just dinner to the pen-tailed tree shrew, a small Malaysian mammal resistant to the effects of chronic drinking, researchers reported Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The shrew's drink of choice is bertam palm nectar, naturally fermented to have an alcohol content up to 3.8% -- just a few tenths of a percent shy of Guinness Draught beer.

In this wetlands wonderland, winged creatures abound. Three black-crowned night-herons stand sentry behind tall grasses. A graceful snowy egret picks its way between coastal rocks while another flies low, nearly skimming the brackish water. A dozen black-necked stilts, their slim, tuxedoed bodies balanced on spindly scarlet legs, probe muddy islands with their long beaks. Nearby, about 15 brown pelicans flap in the water or tuck their pouched beaks under their wings for the night.

One of North America's renowned bird migration and bird-watching areas is strangely silent. Blame Hurricane Ike. "We had red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, a bunch of migrating birds," recalled Ernest Stone, 75, leaning on his cane and surveying debris on the cratered moonscape that used to be the family beach house on Bolivar Peninsula. "I haven't seen a pigeon in a while," he said. "Sea gulls. You could always go out and throw a piece of bread and the sea gulls would come." Not now.

The Bush administration's authorization of a major new offshore oil drilling program in the Arctic Ocean was dealt a serious setback Thursday when a federal appeals court ruled the plan did not adequately consider the effect on bowhead whales and the native villagers who make their living from the frigid coastal waters. Ruling on the first of several major new projects for tapping oil and gas deposits from the Arctic floor, the U.S.

A sound like a high-pitched screech of a bird rang out over the gray-green pickleweed and muddy shores of the Elkhorn Slough. I looked around and saw an otter, presumably a female, that had lost sight of her pup and uttered the plaintive cry. It was a February morning in the 1,439-acre saltwater research reserve right at the curve of Monterey Bay. As I paddled along, I came so close I could see the panicked expression on the creature's face.