Birds can teach us much about what it means to be human. But maybe we’d benefit more from imagining what it means to be a bird. To have the freedom of nearly unlimited movement. To be seemingly fragile and yet powerful beyond measure. To shape and span the planet, pole to pole, for millions of years before humans existed. And to continue doing so as living dinosaurs and one of the world’s all-time most successful animals.
In awe and admiration of our feathered forerunners, friends and fellow denizens of Earth, we invite you to take a bird’s-eye view of the ways they inspire art, science and more across the UCLA College.
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Find Your Flock
We love L.A. — and birdwatching! Living in the city is no obstacle for UCLA’s Bruin Birding Club and friends. In fact, our campus itself is home to some incredible species and habitats. Come take a bird walk with us!
Seasons Change, People Change, Vultures Change
If you’d rather be watching TV on your couch than dancing at the club, you might have something in common with aging griffon vultures, according to new research.
Bruins of a Feather
What’s in a (bird-related) name? Plenty, for these inspiring UCLA College staff, students and alumni with arresting avian appellations. From “Robin” to “Sparrow” to “Paloma” and more, get to know these Bruins whose perspectives on birds and what they represent come from a lifetime of experience.
The Math of Birds — and Beauty
At the UCLA Olga Radko Endowed Math Circle, we believe math is the ultimate form of art and try to convey this to our students. I think that complex symmetries, often hidden, are a foundation of what we perceive as beautiful.
One can draw pictures of pretty much anything — not just birds like the depiction here — using straight line segments or circles in large but finite numbers. The math behind such pictures is, frankly, trivial. Fractals, however, are related to much deeper math — and art. They are manifestations of infinite complexity. Please take a look at two famous simpler fractals: the Koch snowflake and the Sierpinski triangle.
Other interesting artwork corresponding to quite nontrivial math comes from depicting higher dimensional objects. This is a depiction of a four-dimensional polyhedron that has 120 three-dimensional faces, all in the shape of a regular dodecahedron. Finally, some very beautiful artwork comes from non-Euclidean geometries. Here is a look at my favorite tiling of the hyperbolic plane.
The greatest overlap of birds and math that I see is the theory of aerodynamically unstable flight. A bird is opposite to a glider. When not controlled, a glider can fly for a while until it completely loses airspeed due to drag. An unconscious bird falls down like a stone, but it is way more agile than a glider in flight. It can make tight turns, recover from a steep dive, etc. Similarly, passenger airplanes are gliders designed for stable flight while the modern-day fighter planes are extremely agile, but tumble when out of control. It is the math of unstable flight that makes the modern marvels like an F-22 possible.
What I envy about birds is that they have much more space and freedom of movement in 3D — humans are essentially 2D creatures stuck to surfaces — but it is through math that we are able to visualize this and so much more. Ultimately, I want everyone to realize that math is even more beautiful than it is useful. —OLEG GLEIZER, director, UCLA Olga Radko Endowed Math Circle
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Simpli Birds
Birds have conquered the globe in a way most other animals, humans included, can only dream of. They are survivors, adventurers, innovators. Simply put: Birds don’t share our planet. We share theirs. Get inspired by this explainer of all things avian, featuring UCLA Professor Morgan Tingley, doctoral candidate Graham Montgomery and undergraduate researcher Mia Rosati.
A Bird’s Best Friend
If you have any questions about birds on campus — or in general — you would be hard-pressed to find a more enthusiastic, compassionate and knowledgeable avian maven than UCLA’s inaugural chief sustainability officer and current doctoral student Nurit Katz. She loves birds … just don’t ask her why.
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Portrait by Stephanie Yantz/composite by Trever Ducote/UCLA
Birdsong(s) An avian-inspired mixtape for the ages, curated by Professor Adam Bradley, founding director of UCLA’s RAP Lab, who explores song lyrics in popular music as a literary form. |
A Deeper Understanding of Avians — and Ourselves — Through Song
Maybe it's that pesky little issue of lacking self-propelled flight, but as decidedly earthbound mammals, we humans often feel far removed from birds when we think of evolutionary commonalities. Nonetheless, scientists on campus such as Stephanie White, a professor of integrative biology and physiology, continue to find striking similarities between us.
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Birdbow
To honor the cross-spectrum rainbow abundance birds represent, let Rebecca von Damm, class of 2025, introduce you to a collection of winged haiku across the hues.
In the Company of Birds
The work of distinguished professor, environmental humanities scholar and proudly self-described “bird lady” Ursula Heise proves that birds not only inspire humans to create profoundly important stories — they have their own to tell.
Avian Archetypes
Explore some of Native American folklore’s most fascinating birds with Paul Apodaca, who works to preserve and celebrate American Indian history and culture to honor “the beauty, grace, power and wisdom of those who were here before us.”
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Feathers & Flirtations
For over two decades, Barney A. Schlinger, a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology, has dedicated his research to a small tropical bird that lives in the moist lowland forests of Panama — the golden-collared manakin. Learn more about Schlinger, his work and why the manakin’s got all the right moves.
Presence and Plumage
Humanity has always found feathers fascinating. Professors Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Ellen Pearlstein share some of the unique and surprising avenues of study they’ve followed feathers to explore.
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Secrets of a Sparrow
Keeping track of dark-eyed juncos’ comings and goings on and off campus is UCLA doctoral student Joey Di Liberto, a member of the Yeh Lab at UCLA, where he and dozens of other students build on Professor Pamela Yeh’s extensive scholarship about how local birds are affected by the urban landscape and its unique environmental stressors.
Un-Pheasant Dreams
Afraid of birds? You’re in good company. Just ask actress Scarlett “Something about the wings and beaks and the flapping” Johansson. Or basketball player Trae “I’ve had nightmares about birds” Young. Or anyone who ever saw what Mrs. Peacock was really capable of with a candlestick in a game of Clue!
To find out more about ornithophobia — the fear of birds — we asked Michelle Craske, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, who holds the Kevin Love Fund Centennial Chair.
“The most common pathways,” she said, “are a direct traumatizing experience, such as being pecked at by a bird or feeling threatened in some way; watching someone else (such as a family member or friend) being threatened by a bird or being very afraid of birds; and by hearing stories about birds that involve fear and danger, such as watching movies that contain threatening bird images, reading scary stories about birds or being told by caregivers that birds can hurt you.”
She adds that the most effective treatment is exposure therapy, which entails gradually approaching birds that are harmless and learning that they are not, in fact, dangerous. (And perhaps only attending a screening of a certain 1963 horror classic if you know exactly what you’re getting into!)
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Learn to Fly
The power of language — every language — gives us wings. Take flight with UCLA’s American Sign Language instructors Benjamin Lewis and Jennifer Marfino and interpreter Mariam Janvelyan.
Honey, Honey: Cultural Coevolution
One of the projects Brian Wood, associate professor of anthropology, has been working on is a study of the partnership between humans in Africa and a wild bird, the greater honeyguide, to locate bee colonies and their rich deposits of honey and wax. It’s led to some nice publications, including the paper that UCLA Newsroom covered. But that's just part of the story.
From Finches to Falcons: Climate Change vs. Birds
As North America heats up due to climate change, animals are responding in three primary ways: moving north, heading to higher elevations and making phenological changes — adjusting annual cycles such as when they breed. A new UCLA study analyzed 27 years of data to see if birds can keep up with the changing planet.
How to Save a Life
Why should any of us care about birds? When staff member Álvaro Castillo rescued a baby hummingbird, he found an answer that may speak to us all.
A Little Tweet
Celebrate our feathered friends even further with our new bird-themed digital stickers that highlight the unique charms of each of the UCLA College’s five divisions: humanities, life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences and undergraduate education.
On Instagram, search for these Giphy stickers using the phrase “UCLA birds” and put them on a story to rep your division. Don’t forget to tag @UCLACollege!
Show love for your favorite division or bird with these Zoom backgrounds and spice up your UCLA Slack channel communications by using these emoji there, too.
A Newsroom Aviary
The number of bird-related research stories that have perched on UCLA Newsroom over the past decade is impressive. Wing your way through some of these stories to get a fuller picture of the incredible blue-and-gold bird work being done by Bruins every year.
Contributors
UCLA College Development Communications
Lucy Berbeo, Álvaro Castillo, Trever Ducote, Tina Hordzwick, Jonathan Riggs and Katie Sipek
Additional Writing
Madeline Adamo; Adam Bradley; David Colgan; Oleg Gleizer; Ursula Heise; Jacqueline Jacobo, class of 2027; Holly Ober; Rebecca von Damm, class of 2025; and Brian Wood
Photography and Videography
Lesley Chiu, class of 2025; Damon Cirulli; Sebastian Hernandez and Nurit Katz
