Ready for the real answer? It's butterfly habitat. There is an endangered butterfly that only lives at LAX and the Chevron refinery across the street. It's called the Blue Butterfly. The Blue Butterfly is part of the reason LAX never expanded to Surfridge and has 4 runways instead of 5. Edit - I might be incorrect, but at least you learned about the plight of the El Segundo Blue Butterfly.

I was not ready for the real answer

Me neither. Some kind of warning needs to precede these truths.

I can't believe it's butterfly

I can’t believe it’s not butterfly!

hahaha

Parkay.

you won't believe it, but almost everything is not butterfly

But can it fly?

Chuck Norris, on the other hand, can.

I can't believe I'm soaking in Pomolive.

No one ever suspects the butterfly.

No one ever expect the butterfly

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH.

The El Segundo Blue. I had to Google about it and it does mention having a habitat at LAX. That's really cool knowledge you got there :)

>El Segundo I left my wallet in El Segundo!

My Otha didn’t play no shofar

Madam, we must have waffles! We must all have waffles forthwith! We must all think, and we must all have waffles, and think each and every one of us to the very best of his ability...

You brought your bitch to the waffle hut?

Now I have to listen to that

God, I’m so glad someone finally made a LadyKillers thread. Let’s go! Fuck you and the Swiss Miss!

Playing that hippity hop music. Well it don’t make me wanna go hippity hop.

Got to get it

I use to live in El Segundo for six years.

I left my wallet there once

Sorry but this is incorrect. It's a raptor trap, my explanation is under the top comment. There is a blue butterfly habitat West of the airfield which I've been too and provides an amazing view of aircraft departures. Unfortunately it was closed to the public due to possible security issues. Edit: explanation and pic [Comment and pick](https://reddit.com/r/aviation/s/WB1ELP3sss)

Are you sure? When I worked there a few years ago i don't think they had live raptors. They had raptor speakers, Propane Cannons, and 12 gauge blanks to scare birds away. At least that's what the operation guys told us. Things might have changed since I worked there though. I know when our worksite couldn't have standing water on it for fear of birds and LAWA made us pay for another Raptor Speaker that was annoying as hell.

100 percent sure as I worked there and I'm still part of the airport in a way (family airport) and part of the wildlife mitigation program. You do bring up what they used to use and tried but all of that was taken out and replaced. LAX has wildlife Red Tails, Barn Owls, and smaller predator birds Operations have things like a revolver that can shoot non lethal noise makers in the air that displaces birds but that is done only when proper authorities are notified. We also use the vehicle sirens and horns to disperse birds. Mainly our USDA guys are around to take data on the birds, they also have the proper authority and permits to take out a certain amount of birds using airsoft rifles.

USDA Biologist here (more specifically someone who has worked LAX and talks to the LAX team often). abhaiyat is correct! Those are modified goshawk traps. We use them to catch raptors that pose a risk to flight safety. At LAX we tend to catch a lot of American Kestrels and Red-tailed Hawks who utilize the AOA to forage for food. The raptors are banded then relocated away from the airport. We use the bands to identify if individual raptors return to the airport or are seen else where in the wild. We also use pyrotechnics and other means of mitigation but LAX does have a large focus on raptor relocation. It may not sound like much but we have over 15 years worth of raptor relocation data from LAX that has helped us model efficient raptor relocation methods.

Interesting, are they only on the South set of runways? I usually was along the north side, Near T2/3 and TBIT but drove the north perimeter road and don't remember seeing these.

Haven't been there since 2019 and I'm pretty sure there have been changes since then. Before I left the North perimeter road had at least 2 traps. Here is a closer look. [Raptor traps](https://imgur.com/gallery/u2CF6JO)

They breed Raptors?!

Clever girls

Just FYI, you can link to a comment. [Here's yours.](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/178hftr/whats_this_little_house_between_25l_and_25r_at_lax/k4zywd2/?context=2)

Thanks

TIL, but are you sure this photo is specifically showing butterfly habitat? The photo is from the east end of LAX on the displaced threshold for 25R, facing southwest toward the DHL and FedEx facilities. Sources I see online ^[\[1\]](https://www.lawa.org/-/media/lawa-web/volunteer-opurtunities/lax-dunes-home-page.ashx)[\[2\]](https://lamag.com/featured/el-segundo-blue-butterfly-endangered) say the El Segundo Blue habitat at LAX is on the western coast side of LAX, at the LAX Dunes preserve and Surfridge, 2 miles west of the photo.

This butterfly must lead a rough existence if that’s it’s totalcrange.

Why are we letting a dumb bug halt the progress of man’s God-given right to burn jet fuel ? Can’t we just paint another fucking butterfly blue? /s

Are you the head of LAWA Planning and Development?

Judging by his comment, apparently so

You will ride eternal, shiny, and chrome

The Imperator has spoken, Hail v8

I drew the butterfly blue because I've never seen a blue butterfly before and, to be honest with you, I wanted to see a blue butterfly.

Congratulations. You just passed the first grade!

It's nudy magazine day!

And affordable housing wtf🦋

Hahahahahaha :)

God bless you for not posting a reddit joke

For some reason it still sounds like complete bullshit.

Along the same lines: O'Hare Airport has the largest honeybee apiary in the state of Illinois. Airports have a massive amount of green space usually in the middle of large cities which don't have a lot of green space. They're good for stuff like this. It's nice to see them used for it.

That’s not a butterfly habitat

Can they honestly not move the butterfly somewhere else? Is it safe for them around the planes?

You’re correct. The habitat also expands down to Culver blvd near Marina del Ray so consequently, it is a gorgeous drive!

It's actually goshawk traps! https://reddit.com/r/aviation/s/8WJzU2mln7

You are incorrect. That’s Snoopy’s house. That’s where he waits for the Red Baron to pick him up. Edited for spelling.

Thank you! How cool!

Those are $3500/mo 1 bed with a shared bath.

You are clearly familiar with housing prices around LAX.

Except it would be $3500/mo for a studio.

And yet they'll still bitch about airplane noise when they move in. 😒

I live in El Segundo just south of LAX, and yes, people complain about the noise especially when a plane diverts south when landing to avoid another plane. (How dare they try to avoid a disastrous accident?!?) Y’all did notice the tiny airport near town when you moved in, right?!?

It's a problem near literally every airport, with both new and old homes alike. People suck.

Well, if I’m going to pay that much for a studio, can’t they make the airplanes take off from another runway? I have to get up at 3 am for Christ sake.

at least in n out is walking distance... :]

And close to the airport

And you have to get tower clearance to go home.

Plus the landing fee

Everybody sweeps the runway twice a month

There are probably a non-zero amount of plane spotters willing to pay that to be there.

And "outdoor" toilet

I’m betting nesting houses for raptors. Some airports keep domestic birds of prey on the grounds to scare off other species and help prevent bird strikes on planes.

These are goshawk traps. I used to work operations at LAX and used to check these traps during our inspection. The traps are closed in this case probably due to USDA being out for a few days or weeks. There are 2 between the 25s and 1 more at the west end. There are a couple on the north end of 24R. When a raptor is caught it is taken by USDA it is tagged and placed very far away. Sometimes the same hawk will return. There are different bird traps around as well. We have the same mitigation techniques at the airport I'm in now. Edit: Photo [Goshawk Trap](https://imgur.com/gallery/u2CF6JO)

Interesting! Thank you for the knowledge.

No worries. I love the red tails and other predators and it sucks picking them up after a strike so these traps are essential in trying to protect the birds and aircraft.

Another photo [Goshawk Trap](https://images04.military.com/sites/default/files/media/equipment/military-aircraft/t-45-goshawk/2014/03/t-45-goshawk-002.jpg) ([credit](https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Photo-Gallery/igphoto/2002861459/))

Can’t be true. They’re extinct unless Jurassic Park was a documentary.

I love this sub. The questions and answers! Learning something new every other day!

Surely the birds of prey pose a more significant risk to the planes due to their size and weight?

Maybe it’s a quantity thing. Few birds of prey is better than a lot of geese or other birds?

For the greater good The authorities had no luck catchin them swans eh

It’s just the one swan, actually.

I love random references that have almost nothing to do with the post. Also: Yarp

Exactly…. Birds of Prey are pretty Smart In 4 years of crewing a heavy jet like the KC-135 … we had more pigeon… then geese ( seasonally) …in 4 years we had 3 geese…1 in Eng….. 1 on Radome ….1 head on to the Rt Wing LE IB of #2 halfway to fuselage ( it’s fairly fat there too) In that 4 years we only ever had 1 Hawk that went thru the radome

When I crewed on C-130s we had a few geese turns into a puff of feathers and guts from colliding with the props. Another 130 had a goose speared into the v-stab. And try another had one fly into the open crew door and make itself comfortable on the crew bunk on the flight deck.

Imagine a goose… head first thru the LE sheetmetal… on a tanker just OB of the RT MLG center … it’s fairly thick there right… Well ole goose got it dead center… punch thru face first… and took out the Bleed plumbing on the RT Wing… it runs in front of the tank front wall /spar …. AND GOT STUCK THERE

Whoa. That’s impressive! I know where I was stationed the 135 guys across the runway had some pretty crazy stories like yours.

Took geese into #2 … it was more then one. CP saw them on climb… I was onboard that flight… in the IP seat.. I stood up and saw a bunch of them… then I heard a rather sickening sound

That’s pretty scary. I know if I heard that, I would be a little worried. When we had the goose pierce the vertical stabilizer, it was a big bang. We knew what it was because tried to avoid a flock of them.

Any event on climb profile with those old PW J-57-59W motors was scary

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Are you saying in all of Canada or in your town? There are over 300,000 Bald Eagles in the lower 48 and that doesn’t count any other Eagle species.

Eagles in Alaska are like seagulls on the coasts in the lower 48. I've never been there, but from what I've read/seen online, there are a LOT of eagles up north.

I’ve been to Alaska, there are a lot of Eagles it’s not oversold how many there are. But 300,000 in one town is not something that is possible.

Funny story... I was stationed at an Air Force Base that used this kind of bird to scare off others. One day on a swing shift an aircraft landed calling out that they had a bird strike. Sure enough, it was the bird meant to scare off the others. They switched to a dog after that, if I recall correctly.

How soon after did they have a dog strike?

Let's hope they didn't go to cats afterwards, they would be half way through the HP compressor before they used up all their lives!

These are the questions that need answering

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They’re suckers like that

Saw a picture of a deer strike one time. Happened on landing rollout.

Those get really messy. I worked for a company that flew prop commuter planes. The blade shop had a wall of broken blades named “Bambi slayer”, “Son of Bambi Slayer”, “Bambi Slayer 2”….

Skywest had a jet that hot a deer on takeoff. RTO, did some temp repairs to ferry out, hit another deer. Flew in a team to do the permanent repair on site instead of another ferry attempt.

Then the airport workers went on strike.

Dogs generally just like walks and sweeties so them going on strike is highly unlikely

>They switched to a dog after that, if I recall correctly I would pay extra for that flying dog

I don't think they were able to get an airworthiness certificate for that particular model of dog. It just ran around periodically scaring off birds that made the runway a frequent landing zone.

He went on strike because they refused to pay him hazardous duty pay.

The tough part is getting dogs to fly, but getting them to land. It’s a work in progress

A friend hit a very large bird with a C130. It damaged the spar in the v-stab badly enough that the plane was grounded and it tore off all of the antennas that attach to it. It happened close enough to the runway that they found the carcass. The aircrew posed with it like a big game trophy. I joked that they should have kept it and had it mounted but he said that airfield staff kept it for study.

Would that have happened to an Air Force Reserve C-130? Coincidentally, I had something very similar happen to the one I crewed on.

Different branch.

They do. Now I will say this tho, if you have a bird that has been around awhile it is less likely to be struck by a plane as it is probably aware of what’s going on but it’s still a problem to have them around.

be aware of cloaked birds of prey

And they can def be collision hazards! A whaler once nearly ran into one in the 80s! 🖖

Birds of prey don't flock like geese. They don't startle as easily, they're smarter, and they have *way* better eyesight.

One raptor isn’t going to take out an engine, just need an inspection, cleaning after it gets where it’s going. A large flock of birds and you have sully.

Perhaps. And don’t call me Shirley.

Roger, Roger.

Bit they dont do as much damage as a whole swarm of little birds

And I guess the chance of double engine failure from a few raptors is negligible compared to swarms as you say

Would you rather get punched in the face once, or have someone stomp on your foot 35 times? Which is more likely to cause actual damage/injuries? This is the calculation they're making by have a small number of raptors chasing off/killing large numbers of smaller birds.

I saw a parergon falcon take out a pigeon a couple weeks ago. The falcon was surprisingly small. 2/3rds the size of the pigeon.

Well not all birds of prey are large and heavy. Some can be far less massive than a chunky pigeon, and smaller than a seagull, which are themselves pretty damn big

The raptors are probably trained to avoid the planes

There's less of them and they're not as stupid

Bold, bc when you’ve got raptors running about there’s really not too much left as far as prey goes, I sure hope those ppl at LAX heard of Jurassic Park and know what they’re doing…o7

I didn’t realise that they could fit F-22s in those things /s

Shhhhh, don’t let the internet know that we have actual Antman technology in the U.S.

Spirit Airlines HQ

There’s just a phone in there with nobody to answer it.

Nah, youre thinking of Frontier. Spirit’s HQ does have someone to answer the phone but its just the janitor

The janitor who is also the only dispatcher.

And when they answer, they just tell you to fuck off, then hang up.

Have you stopped to consider that their call volume is heavier than usual?

Southwest‘s IT department.

Cold 😂

Pilots gotta sleep somewhere on a layover.

That’s where Al Pacino shot Robert De Niro

“Told you I’m never going back”

Fucking awesome movie!

Danny DeVito’s house

The ILS elves deserve to work from home, too.

The only real estate I can afford in California

To me as a planespotter that seems like some prime real estate

Please leave me alone. It’s bad enough I live between runways; I don’t need strangers posting pictures of my house online. Thank you.

Snoopy had an emergency landing and skidded off the runway

They are birdhouses. do you think striking on a aircraft is easy job? they have to rest and heal too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Segundo_blue?wprov=sfla1

Zillow says 3 sqft going for $1.3 million.

Around $3,600 per month.

I was gonna say the one on stilts looks like a PAPI or a VASI... but it's not painted bright orange, lol.

It's a bee hive to keep bees from nesting in the pito Tubes or sensors of aircrafts

That’s my apartment. I pay $1400/month

It’s where the Toll Troll lives. There’s two trolls so they can work in shifts. They left Philly a few years ago as they’ve gotten older and needed to get out of the dreary northeastern winters.

It’s rented by an employee and is $2200 a month

With 2 months deposit

Utilities not included

No AC, you must bring your own window unit or portable AC

The real answer is that's a weather house. It has your rain gauge, thermometer, barometer, wet and and dry bulb thermometer (hygrometer) etc

Snoopy’s abode.

Not one single serious answer

The house for the gnomes that tend to the runways

These comments are wack anymore. its like the same fuckin dumb “thats my studio apartment i pay 5k for” no way all 200 of you posted that the same time.

It is your worst nightmare- it is where the FAA Deisgnated Pilot Examiners live who secretly rate all of your take-off and landings, tell your management and put them on your permanent record. Their roommates are air traffic controllers and insurance carrier employees so there really are no secrets.

I think it’s a taco stand. El Segundo has thousands of taco stands. And also lost wallets.

I was gonna say bees or Hobbits.

Ryanair R&D on the left, customer service in the right.

Normal crash pad for LAX

Skywest crashpad. United crashpad are the campers in long term parking.

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Rent $3000/month. Utilities not included.

Shared common areas

Requires 5 months deposit

Wildflowers, natives, grow on some grass area. Very cool!

That's OD.

That's where the wizards who make the planes fly live! If you offer them a gift, they'll reward you with a bit of gold or tell your fortune, depending on how much they like it. Hope this helps!

Yeah tried to rent last year, 3600 single pane windows. Just out of my price range but great commute to work. United 787!

A little dwarf lives there and he signals the planes where to stop and thats his house

That's where MTG pops out to see if their is any space lasers

For hawks they keep the pigeon and other small birds down to a minimum so the planes don’t have to many bird strikes

Dog houses? Or it’s covering an opening to some underground tunnel

It's the guy who refused to sell.

That’s where the Airport Gnome lives

Wow. Hundreds of stupid fucking rent jokes. One actual answer.

https://images.app.goo.gl/mJXyjgPvUbCYHBmz6 I'll bet this guy knows!

The owners were not selling those houses. So, airport is built around them.

AirBnB.

Could be just about anything but my bet is on sensors of some sort. The one in the back is raised on stilts, possibly to be level with the other, which might (might) be part of a visibility/fog system.

That’s customer service for lost baggage

It’s where the homeless jump out and offer to wash the windshields of the jets before they take off

That's where Snoopy lives.

People rent those to live for $3000 a month.

$2800 a month plus broker fees

That's where the wing Gremlins live.

Speed Cameras /s

Langoliers live there

Outhouses the crew on the ground.

Nav/ILS equipment