This is not a parody account. This is the Los Angeles Times.
No kidding, dude, the LA Times is out here reporting on bird segregation and how "wealthier, and typically whiter, areas" have better birds.
I can't, man. Like, who has time for this? Who even gets paid for this? This is comical.
The piece follows a few bird watchers as they first scope out the Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles, which is mostly made up of concrete.
The researchers spotted a house sparrow and pulled binoculars to their eyes. "They're all over the shrubbery in Boyle Heights," said Wood, an associate professor of ecology at Cal State Los Angeles…
[H]ouse sparrows are urban creatures that thrive where people do. They're resilient, adaptable and aggressive, and are found around buildings and streets, scavenging food crumbs or nesting in roof tiles.
They also saw a Cooper's Hawk, a few ravens, and some pigeons.
But when they traveled up to San Marino, a heavily-wooded residential area near Pasadena, they found the racism they were looking for. And by racism I mean different species of birds.
Instead of the sparrows, ravens, common pigeons and a Cooper's hawk the bird watchers spotted in Boyle Heights, the manicured lawns and mature trees of San Marino bristled with a very different assortment of birds.
"There goes a band-tailed pigeon right over there," Wood exclaimed, turning his attention from a red-tailed hawk. They also recognized acorn woodpeckers, a California towhee, dozens of turkey vultures circling overhead, a dark-eyed junco, a mockingbird, an Anna's hummingbird and a black phoebe.
You think I'm kidding about them finding the racism, but I'm not.
Here's what the incredibly serious Los Angeles Times had to say:
It was, the researchers said, a vivid illustration of the so-called luxury effect — the phenomenon by which wealthier, and typically whiter, areas attract a larger and more diverse population of birds…
In fact, when it comes to the Los Angeles Basin, the researchers say that bird species are remarkably segregated.
In a new study, the researchers argue that the difference in bird populations is a lasting consequence of racist home lending practices from decades ago, as well as modern wealth disparities.
There's literally only one response to this nonsense…
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