Just to give you butterfly folks a jolt… I bet you haven’t seen this butterfly on goldenrod in Pennsylvania.
Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) is native to North America but the butterfly is not. It’s a Common Bluebottle (Graphium sarpedon) found in Asia and Australia.
It’s nice to know that goldenrod attracts such beautiful butterflies but how did these two get together?
The photo was taken in Japan. The goldenrod was imported.
Unfortunately Canada goldenrod went wild when it got overseas and is now an invasive species in Asia. It’s such a problem in China that they have eradication programs for it just as we do for Japanese knotweed.
If we could only trade our Japanese knotweed for their goldenrod, we’d all be happy.
(photo by Isaka Yogi on Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original.)
… from http://vimeo.com/15184546. The original website about this bird (at the link below) is also missing. However, I’m keeping this post as a placeholder. Here’s what it was about:
Libby Strizzi alerted me to a heart-warming video about a severely injured bald eagle who got a chance at a better life.
Beauty lost her upper beak when she was shot in the face by a poacher. This 2008 video shows the first of many steps in restoring her missing beak.
The video has been popular on the Internet this month, but current news of Beauty is hard to find because the original website at Birds of Prey Northwest has been inundated by recent web traffic.
Though we don’t know how Beauty’s doing today, the film is full of hope.
(2008 award-winning video by Keith Bubach, produced for Evening Magazine, KING-TV, Seattle)
Pitt peregrines Dorothy and E2 would be proud to know their son Henry is doing well in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Though he’s only one year old he’s set up shop at Tower East and can be seen there almost every day.
Last week Chad+Chris Saladin got some nice photos of Henry that show he’s nearly finished molting into adult plumage. His back is nearly all gray and his chest has become salmon-colored. In this he takes after his mother.
Henry was quite expressive while Chad+Chris watched. Here he is “winking” at Tower East while half asleep.
Though these look a lot like tornadoes they’re actually waterspouts, a phenomenon that fascinates me because I rarely see it.
Waterspouts don’t occur in Pittsburgh because they require lots of open water and just the right weather conditions. The best place to see them is in the Florida Keys but you don’t have to go that far at this time of year. They also form on the Great Lakes in late summer and early fall.
It’s possible to have a tornado over water, and yes it’s called a waterspout, but those are rare and dangerous. Tornadic waterspouts spin down from above but the really cool and much more common fair weather waterspouts spin up from the water to join the clouds. These require warm water, light winds, and humid air between the water and clouds. They go through five stages as described on this NOAA webpage:
Dark spot: A light-colored circle appears on the water’s surface surrounded by a dark area.
Spiral pattern: The dark spot spins and forms a spiral on the water around it.
Spray ring: The spinning makes water spray up around the dark spot. The spray forms a small “eye” like the eye of a hurricane.
Mature vortex: The spray ring gets organized and moves up to join the cloud. Now it looks like a waterspout. Sometimes you can see through its hollow center.
Decay: The funnel and spray vortex dissipate as warm water stops feeding them. The waterspout disappears.
The frequency of waterspout sightings on the Great Lakes has increased since NOAA began tracking them in 1957. There was a big outbreak of them on all five lakes September 27 to October 3 in 2003.
To learn more about waterspouts watch this dramatic video on the NOAA website.
(photo from NOAA by L. Glover. Click on the image to see the original)
Continuing on the theme of strange predators here’s interesting news about a plant that preys on insects.
Nepenthes gracilis is a tropical pitcher plant native to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Like all pitcher plants it eats insects by trapping them in the digestive fluid at the bottom of its tubed-shaped pitcher. The inner surface is slippery when wet to enhance the trapping effect.
This is dangerous for an insect, so why would an ant bother to get near the pitcher opening? Why would it go under the lid?
Nepenthes gracilis tempts insects with a tasty nectar coating on the underside of the lid. In fair weather a skillful bug can perch on the edge, eat the treat, and walk away.
But in the tropics it rains often and heavily. Sometimes insects seek shelter under the lid or are eating underneath it when the rain begins… and then…
Researchers discovered that heavy raindrops prompt the insects’ demise. The lid is poised like a springboard. The weight of a raindrop springs the trap and catapults the insect into the bottom of the pitcher.
(photo from the PLOS One article by Bauer, U., B. Di Giusto, J. Skepper, T.U. Grafe & W. Federle 2012, (CC-BY-SA), Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original)
While at Cape Cod I was fascinated by the wide variety of hermit crabs in the tidal pools. Each crab has a mobile home. The tiniest wear cone-shaped whelk shells. Larger ones wear round snail shells. They’re all in marvelous shapes and sizes.
Hermit crab housing is not a steady state. The ideal shell has room for the crab to grow and allows him to retract in the face of danger. When the shell’s too small the crab is vulnerable.
As he grows, an individual hermit crab is forced to acquire a series of larger shells but a right-sized shell is not always easy to find. His quest is most successful when he joins a house hunting social group.
Though their name is “hermit” these crabs work together when shells are not extremely scarce. Their cooperation was not well understood until researchers from Tufts University and the New England Aquarium teamed up to study the Social context of shell acquisition in Coenobita clypeatus hermit crabs, published in April 2010.
According to researcher Randi Rotjan, “Hermit crabs are really picky about real estate because they’re constantly getting thrown back into the housing market.”
When a hermit crab needs a new home he keeps his eye out for any larger shell. When he finds one that’s empty, but too big, he waits next to it. He won’t use this shell but a larger crab will … and that crab will be in a smaller shell … and that smaller shell might be just the right size. So he waits.
Pretty soon this lone hermit crab has attracted a variety of others who are also in the housing market. They mill about, waiting. The smaller ones piggyback on the larger ones and ride around like papooses. They don’t want to miss their chance.
Eventually all the crabs are lined up by size in a synchronous vacancy chain. The crab who wants the large empty shell is in place and bang! “The chain fires off in seconds, just like a line of dominoes,” says Rotjan. Everyone moves in at once.
Big move-in events are not unique to hermit crabs. This is Move-In week at Carlow, Chatham, Duquesne, Point Park, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Pittsburgh.
We’re about to see a lot of synchronous vacancy chains in Pittsburgh … but they won’t fire off in seconds. 😉
At Pitt on Thursday, Karen Lang and I were surprised to see both adult peregrines snoozing in nooks high on the Cathedral of Learning. It’s been weeks since both were visible at the same time.
Lately they’ve been in Lawrenceville.
Sharon Leadbitter checks St. Augustine’s cross every day. On Tuesday she saw Dorothy.
