Now that the birds are harder to find I’m noticing plants more than ever.
Last week my favorite shrub started blooming in Schenley Park.
Bottlebrush Buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) is a small buckeye that grows wider than tall. Native to the southeastern US, it’s planted as an ornamental. That’s why it’s in the park.
Because the tree is small its long, feathery flower spikes are spectacular just above eye level. The spikes resemble bottle brushes and gave the plant its name.
If you’d like to see for yourself, visit the wooded trail next to the pond. You’d better hurry, though. The flowers won’t last long and I saw chipmunks climbing the shrubs and eating the blossoms. Oh no!
(photo by Magnus Manske via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original)
Ozone is cosmopolitan because it’s formed in the sky and blows with the wind. It’s created when heat and sunlight cause nitrous oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to chemically combine into O3. NOx and VOCs come from motor vehicles, power plants, industry and chemical emissions and from those new gas well compressor stations popping up in Pennsylvania. That’s why we’re urged not to drive so much and to use less electricity on Ozone Action Days.
We’re also told to stay indoors. That may work for us but it doesn’t help birds, animals and plants that have nowhere else to go. Ozone is harmful to their respiratory systems, too, and it burns sensitive plants.
So we’re all limiting our activity today – a sort of Ozone Inaction Day – and waiting for the weather to change.
Bad news for everything that breathes.
(NOAA’s 1-hour ozone prediction for the Eastern Great Lakes for 5:00pm July 6, 2010 (as of noon on July 5). Click on the image and the Loop Control arrow to watch the latest animation on the NOAA website.) .
Juvenile peregrine catches prey released by his parent (photo by Chad+Chris Saladin)
5 July 2010
Now that it’s early July the Pitt peregrines are really hard to find on campus. Though I’ve seen the adults carrying prey and know they’re still feeding their young, the “kids” are not hanging out near the Cathedral of Learning. Instead they’re flying elsewhere while they learn to hunt. If they don’t master hunting they’ll starve. If they aren’t really good at it they can’t feed a family.
Hunting lessons happen in the air:
The adult peregrine catches a bird (in this case a pigeon) and carries it in its talons to the vicinity of its youngsters.
The youngsters are always on the lookout for a possible meal and immediately chase the adult, shouting for food.
When a youngster catches up, the adult rises up and dangles the pigeon.
Sometimes the juvenile flips upside down, raises his feet and catches the prey as his parent drops it (shown here). Sometimes he dives for it as it falls past him.
The lesson is always noisy. The juveniles shout the entire time, even after catching the prey.
Look at the surprise on this youngster’s face! I wish our peregrines would do this while I’m watching.
Thankfully Chad and Chris Saladin were able to capture it on camera in Ohio.
(photo by Chad+Chris Saladin)
p.s. At this time of year the adult peregrines occasionally visit their nest (here’s why).
p.p.s. Chad & Chris reminded me that the birds in this photo are Maddy (adult) and Michelin (juvenile). Maddy was born at Pitt in 2004 and nests on the I-480 bridge in Cleveland. Michelin landed on a pile of old tires when he fledged – hence his name. He’s all grown up now and nests at Lake Erie near Cleveland.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me. — lyrics from This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie, 1944
People think orchids are hothouse flowers but quite a few native orchids grow wild in western Pennsylvania. The showiest are few and far between. The inconspicuous are hard to find.
This Ragged Fringed Orchid (Platanthera lacera) grows in Allegheny County.
It’s usually overlooked because its flowers are a creamy green color. The plant itself is two feet tall.
Cool fact: It emits its fragrance at night to attract Sphinx Moths! Click here to read more.
Before we can go any further on the topic of feathers — and there’s a lot further to go — we need to learn some terminology.
Feathers are made of keratin, just like our hair and fingernails, but they seem a lot more complex because we don’t live with them every day. Fortunately this cool illustration from Wikimedia inspired me to delve into the parts of a feather. And here they are:
Calamus or Quill: (Pronounced KAL-e-mes) The large hollow portion of the shaft that attaches the feather to the bird’s skin or bone. It doesn’t have any barbs on it.
Rachis or Shaft: (Pronounced RAY-kiss) The long, slender central part of the feather that holds the vanes. It’s like the mast that holds the sails.
Vane: The plumed part of the feather that grows from the central shaft. The vanes are like the canvas sails on a mast. Notice that the two vanes of this feather are about equally wide.
Barb: The barbs grow from the rachis. Each barb is a feather within a feather with a little shaft and little barbs of its own called barbules. When viewed as a whole the barbs are the vane.
Barbules (too tiny to show above): Barbules are mini-barbs that grow from the central shaft of each barb. The barbules on one side of the shaft are smooth. Those on the other side have tiny little hooks called barbicels that grab the smooth barbules that lie next to it. When properly preened the barbicels all hook up to their nearby barbules and the feather vane is smooth. See the bottom row in the illustration below.
One of the prettiest flowers you’ll see by the road at this time of year is one of the most aggressive, invasive plants in North America.
Crown vetch (Securigera varia) was introduced in the U.S. in the 1950’s during our interstate highway boom. It was hailed at the time as a fast growing, drought resistant ground cover and planted extensively along the new highways to eliminate the need to mow.
Those same characteristics allowed it to smother the native plants it encountered in its path.
Crown vetch is native to Europe, southwest Asia and northern Africa. It thrives in open, sunny places, spreading by seed and rhizomes. It has no North American enemies, nor can it be eaten by farm animals or wildlife because it contains nitroglycosides which cause slow growth and paralysis if consumed in large amounts.
Sixty years after its introduction to America, crown vetch is listed as invasive in 45 states. If you’ve ever tried to eradicate it you’ll know why.
I once planted a free seed packet of wildflowers in my front garden. To my dismay the seed company included two — just two! — crown vetch seeds in the mix. I let them grow that first year.
The next spring I was left with two perennials and two crown vetch plants. I pulled the vetch and planted new flowers but the vetch reappeared in more places than I’d pulled up. I weeded, it reappeared, over and over and over again. Yikes!
The only solution was to give up on the other flowers and aggressively pull out every crown vetch plant and its root as soon as it appeared. It took two years of meticulous weeding before I eradicated the vetch from my small garden.
Sadly, the seed companies still sell crown vetch.
You can buy this pink invader … but DON’T!
(photo by Trisha M. Shears via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original.)
Todd Katzner is on a field expedition in Mongolia and emailed me this picture yesterday, a sample of the stunning raptors he’s seeing there.
A lot of my scientist friends do field work in the summer, something I’ve never done. To get a sense of what their trips are like I’ve been reading Tingay & Katzner’s The Eagle Watchers.
Ghostly New Guinea harpy eagles, wary and comical Steller’s sea eagles.
The birds they see on field expeditions are out of this world.
A friend once said to me, “For someone who likes the outdoors it’s surprising how much you hate insects.”
Well, yes, that’s the impression people get when they hear me talk about ticks and mosquitoes.
I HATE mosquitoes.
My skin overreacts to mosquito bites which instantly become red, itchy welts. I steel myself not to scratch them but my guard is down while I’m asleep and I wake to discover I scratched them overnight. The bites are bigger and itchier than ever and they are bleeding. Aaaaarrrggg!
Only female mosquitos bite us and they do it to get a blood meal so they can develop their eggs. While drinking our blood the little vampires inject us with their saliva which contains anticoagulant. That’s how they transfer disease. That’s how people catch malaria and how birds catch West Nile virus.
In the beginning of time mosquitos bit only birds but now they bite mammals as well. Why did they add mammals to the menu? Because we smell just as tasty.
Mosquitos use their antennae to smell and they can sense much more than we do. For starters, they can “smell” carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas birds and mammals exhale.
But there’s more to it than that. Last year researchers Walter Leal and Zain Syed of University of California, Davis identified the odor that when coupled with CO2 delivers the double-whammy, the odor that makes us irresistible.
“Nonanal is how they find us,” said Leal. “The antennae of the Culex quinquefasciatus are highly developed to detect even extremely low concentrations of nonanal.”
When Leal and Syed baited mosquito traps with CO2 and nonanal (pronounced NAWN-uh-nawl) it more than doubled the attraction of CO2 alone. This had to be painstaking work in more ways than one.
Now that they know what really attracts mosquitos, I hope they figure out how I can stop emitting it. In the meantime I’ll continue to hike with long pants and long sleeves in hot, humid weather – just to avoid being bitten.
Did I tell you I HATE mosquitoes?
(photo of a mosquito on a hollyhock from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original.)
News of the Pitt and Gulf tower peregrine families has been good since Thursday’s tragedy.
If you’ve kept up with the comments on my Green Boy post, you’ll know that Peter Bell and Anne Marie Bosnyak both observed the Pitt peregrines on Friday after work. (Information on Green Boy, his sister Yellow and the status of the chimney is at the bottom of my Green Boy post.)
Peter had his camera with him and saw the entire family, which now numbers three juveniles and two adults. I love his photo of a juvenile on top of a miniature spire at St. Paul’s Cathedral. See more of Peter’s pictures here.
Meanwhile downtown, Sharon Leadbitter has a birds-eye view of the Gulf Tower from her office inside the US Steel Building. On Thursday she took her camera to work and was able to record video of a juvenile peregrine flying. Her video below gives you an idea of how very big their world is – even when they’re close to home.
It’s a really nice view from the top.
Thanks to all of you for your news and photos of Pittsburgh’s peregrines. Keep sending me your observations. I appreciate your help keeping track of these birds!
