Birder Box
Artist Bio:
Ella Young is a textile designer from Los Angeles. She loves botanical illustration, ethnographic textiles, and playful conversational prints. She is a graduate of Pasadena’s Polytechnic School and Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied Fashion Design and Art History. Her industry experience is in print design and fabric R&D.
She moved to Hermon in 2018 and loves the views the neighborhood affords her. Often turning to nature as inspiration, she discovered a recent interest in bird watching, and this new hobby inspired the design for the utility box.
Box Description:
I love describing to my mid-western friends that I live in Los Angeles, a fantasy land of parrots and peacocks. But looking out my window this last year and a half, I’ve realized that besides these ostentatious birds, I know very little of the feathered folk that live in my backyard. I could name a few common birds but wished to recognize more, especially the ones in my yard. My proposal for the LADOT Utility Box design is a bird identification chart, a birder box, if you will. The design includes 30+ local birds depicted to scale with common and scientific names. Using bird books, pocket guides, and the websites of the Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab, I identified the most common birds in our area, cross referencing with eBird, a website where people record their sightings. Since starting this project I’ve discovered a new hobby and am delighted by each new species I identify. (I added the Red-whiskered Bulbul to the design today, when I spotted two eating pomegranates from my neighbor’s tree.) Hermon is home to more than people, and I hope this Birder Box will inspire passersby to learn about and observe our aviary neighbors.
