and that's typical of the birds that we find in chaparral, not just the wrentit; but the california thrasher which actually has been giving us some nice views this morning sitting right up on top of vegetation. long, curved bill but a similar morphology to the wrentit, but all these birds have really, really short wings and long tails and they tend to be pretty drab in color, brown or gray, they don't want to show up and those short wings allow them to move through the shrubs and the long tail acts as a rudder. it's a cool bird and one of 492 species that are known from san diego county, making it the most diverse county, and...that's nice, of course that's the other sound of southern california - music from a passing car. red hot chili peppers i guess. but it sort of shows though uh, that there's not much of this habitat left in southern california and, and that's an important point because this habitat is vitally important for birds. >>bird chirping. >>even though this may not be a desert, it's filled with things that we think of as desert plants, and animals. there are a lot of plants her