Yearly Archives: 2012

Favorite Wildflower Guide

Books & Events, Plants & Fungi
Cover of Newcomb’s

Early this month I received a request: “I am trying to be a naturalist and your information about plants and trees has helped me better recognize my world here in Michigan,” wrote Matt LaMore. “Can you recommend some reading for me to better identify the plants I see throughout the woods and fields?”

As I prepared my answer I realized a lot of you may have the same question.

Last winter I wrote a series about trees and recommended the Winter Tree Guide but I’ve never discussed wildflower books. Here’s my favorite.

If you want a single field guide for identifying wildflowers in northeastern North America Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide is the one for you.  First published in 1977 it covers 1,375 wildflowers, vines, and shrubs —  from southern Canada to Tennessee, from Maine and the Maritimes to Wisconsin.

Instead of grouping flowers by color, Lawrence Newcomb guides you through a unique key system to help you identify the species.  You examine the flower’s symmetry, count its repeating parts, look how the leaves are arranged on the stem, and determine whether the leaves are smooth-edged, toothed, or have multiple leaflets on one main stem.

After you’ve answered these few basic questions the key guides you to the appropriate pages.  There you find pen and ink illustrations with descriptions to narrow your selection.  Often the plant you’re seeking is right there on the first page. The black-and-white illustrations are more helpful than color photos.

With practice you’ll identify nearly every flower you see.  I am so well-trained by Newcomb’s that I now think of plants in terms of his key so I can look them up later if I don’t have the book with me.  (I’m not a botanist so my field notes include cryptic references like “5, alternate, divided” which I look up when I get home.)

This is a book you’ll want to own and carry with you.  Click on the book cover above to buy it at Amazon.

(image of book cover from Amazon.com)

A Bad Hair Day?

Plants & Fungi

This flower looks like it’s having a bad hair day but that ragged look attracts many pollinators.

Bee balm’s (Monarda didyma) nectar treat is deep inside those long, red tubes.  Each tube is a flower with stamens and pistils just waiting to touch a visitor.

The color is red, the tube is long. It’s perfect for hummingbirds.

And for moths that resemble hummingbirds — like this hummingbird clearwing.

Love that tousled look.

(photos by Chuck Tague)

Dunkin Peanuts

Bird Behavior

Last month a common grackle carried a piece of stale bread to my birdbath and dropped it in to soak.  He flipped it over once, then retrieved and ate it.

Though this is common behavior in grackles most other birds don’t do it, so I began a quest for a photo of a grackle dipping bread in water.  It was amazingly difficult to find but here’s something even better:   The Backyard Bag Feeder Project.

Starting in 1998, Zach Glenwright set up computers, video cams, a tray of water and a specially constructed “bag feeder” to attract and film animals in his backyard.  In the video above you can see his foam-filled Ziploc bag has cutouts with peanuts inside.  Birds and animals yanked food out of the bags but the plastic slowed them down enough to film them doing interesting things.

And the grackles were certainly interesting.

Here a grackle parent collects peanuts to feed his chicks but before he puts the food in their mouths he does a very Grackle Thing. He dips the peanuts in water.  Sometimes he dips them more than once.  Sometimes he leaves them in the water to soak.  This has no affect on the peanuts’ consistency but he does it anyway.

He obviously prefers Dunkin’ Peanuts.  His kids like them, too.

Click here to read more about grackles and their love of water.

 

(YouTube video from the Backyard Bag Feeder Project by Zach Glenwright on YouTube)

Aphelion Today

Weather & Sky

Today the Earth reaches its furthest point from the Sun in its annual orbit.  This is Earth’s aphelion, position 1 above.

It’s a source of wonder to me that this happens at our hottest time of year.  Shouldn’t aphelion cool things off?

Apparently not by much.  The orbit determines Earth’s livability but has far less affect on temperature than the composition of our atmosphere and the tilt of the earth’s axis.  Right now the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun and we certainly feel it.

If we had the data and computer horsepower we could prove aphelion’s effect on climate because it hasn’t always occurred in July.

According to Wikipedia, “On a very long time scale, the dates of perihelion and aphelion progress through the seasons and make one complete cycle in 22,000 to 26,000 years. There is a corresponding movement of the position of the stars as seen from Earth that is called the apsidal precession.”

So, hey, if you’re around 12,000 years from now, aphelion will happen in December.

It’s something to look forward to.

(drawing of aphelion and perihelion by Peasron Scott Foresman via Wikimedia Commons)

Flag Waving Fawn

Books & Events, Deer, Mammals
Fawn at Allegheny Cemetery in 2012, Pittsburgh, PA (photo by Sharon Leadbitter)

Though this picture was taken around Memorial Day, the fawn looks as if he’s celebrating the Fourth of July.

This little guy and his mother are part of the large deer herd that lives at Allegheny Cemetery in the city’s Lawrenceville neighborhood.  In late May the Veterans’ section was all decked out in red, white and blue.  The deer didn’t seem to mind the waving flags.

Doe and fawn at Allegheny Cemetery in 2012, Pittsburgh, PA (photo by Sharon Leadbitter)

Sharon Leadbitter took their pictures and as the deer left the area the fawn did a little flag waving of his own.  See how his tail is up in that first photo?

According to a 1991 study published in The American Naturalist, fawns wave their tails much more than adults.  Winston Paul Smith studied the reasons why white-tailed deer wave their tails and wrote, “Tail flagging was observed in all age and sex groups, even neonates within hours after birth. The tendency to tail flag was greatest among fawns. As fawns became older, tail flagging decreased so that by 7 mo of age they tail flagged at a rate similar to that of yearlings and adults.”

Watch the Fourth of July parades today and see if you don’t think this applies to small humans, too.  Everyone waves flags but the youngest wave them more.

Happy Fourth of July!

(photos by Sharon Leadbitter)

Inside My Window

Bird Behavior, Songbirds
House sparrow (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

July 3, 2012 at WQED:

Yesterday morning I got a call from the Business Office, “There’s a bird in Payroll.  Can you come down?”

I grabbed my bird rescue towel (nothing special, just a bath towel) and headed for Lindy Mason’s office.  Someone had probably left the loading dock door open and a bird got in.  Once inside, birds always fly through the open concourse to the third floor lights and windows and are stuck upstairs without an exit.

I expected to find a song sparrow, easy to catch because they doggedly stay by the window, but when I closed Lindy’s door to contain the action I was surprised to find a male house sparrow and he had some tricks up his sleeve.

For starters he was fast.  Like a house fly, he waited until I got close then darted away.

Worse, he hid.  While my back was turned he zipped into Lindy’s shelving and hunkered down like a mouse.  Silence.

It dawned on me that because house sparrows are cavity nesters they feel right at home in small dark spaces.  This was not going to be an easy rescue.

To give you an idea of the challenge I took some pictures. Here’s where he was, hidden in the back right corner of the bottom filing tray.  It should have been easy to see a bird in there. Not!  It was dark and he was dark.

He hid in the lowest filing tray

After moving the tape dispenser, file folders, and books (not in the picture) I located him. And he escaped!!  I couldn’t find him anywhere.  Aaarg!!

Lindy came in to help me take her office apart.  We closed drawers, cleared the floor and moved the trash can up to the window ledge.

I finally found him in a very dark corner on the floor.  He flew again, darting back and forth (lots of shouting!) and then a miracle.  He fluttered at the window and dropped into the trash can to hide.

I was laughing so hard I couldn’t believe our luck.  He was hiding in something I could carry!

I checked to make sure he was in the bag among the trash.  He’s not in this picture but he was unbelievably hard to see in the folds of the liner bag.  I draped the bird towel over the trash can and took my bundle to the loading dock.

The loading dock door was closed.  The bird flew free and didn’t come back.

Everyone’s happy that the bird is outside our windows now.

(photo of a house sparrow in France by Pierre Selim on Wikimedia Commons. Click on the caption to see the original.  Remaining photos by Kate St. John)

Update on the New Tenants

Nesting & Courtship, Songbirds

Marcy Cunkleman’s bird house is seeing a lot of activity now that the new tenants are fully established inside.  The tree swallows’ eggs have hatched and the babies are growing fast.  On Thursday and Saturday she sent me photo updates.

Above, one of the adults lands at the nest opening last week.  There are so many feathers decorating the inside of the box that you can see one nearly poking out of the hole.

 

At that point the nestlings were still pink and just beginning to grow their own feathers. See the gray bumps on their pink bodies?

 

Even though they looked pink and helpless they were strong enough to hoist themselves to the nest opening and position their beaks, waiting for their parents to deliver food.

 

By Saturday they were beginning to look like swallows with glossy dark feathers.

 

It won’t be long before they fledge.

(photos by Marcy Cunkleman)

Canada Day

Books & Events, Deer

Happy Canada Day!

Readers in Canada, Detroit and Buffalo know all about it but most Americans forget that Canada’s national holiday is July 1.

Today Canada commemorates the anniversary of the British North American Act of 1867 that merged three colonies into a single country named Canada.  Like a wedding reception that celebrates a married couple’s new status, Canada celebrates the British Parliament’s declaration of their new status as a dominion.  To carry the analogy further…  in the U.S. we celebrate our elopement on July 4, the day we publicly broke with Britain and signed the Declaration of Independence.

Beyond this difference in national origin, Canada and the U.S. share a continent and a lot of plants and animals.

Here are four things found outdoors this month in Pennsylvania that have “Canada” as their first name.


Canada lilies bloom in Pennsylvania’s woods.  They’re hard to find because deer eat the blooms so I felt lucky to see one last weekend near Seven Springs, PA.

 

Canada warblers breed in the Laurel Highlands.  Try the Quebec Run Wild Area if you want to see one.

 

Canada geese are everywhere now.  Look for them on our rivers and lakes or at your favorite golf course.

 

Canada thistle is everywhere, too, but it was misnamed.  It’s from Europe, not Canada.  Wonder how that happened.

Can you think of other “Canada” plants and animals?

(photo credits: Canada lily by Dianne Machesney, Canada warbler by Cris Hamilton, Canada goose by Chuck Tague, Canada thistle from Wikimedia Commons)

Water Willow

Plants & Fungi

Here’s a beautiful wildflower that’s blooming now in western Pennsylvania.

Water willow (Justicia americana) attracts your attention because the plant is three feet tall with unusual flowers 1.5 inches across.  The flowers are shaped almost like an iris, white with purple accents.

Water willow got its name from its two most obvious characteristics:  it’s a perennial water plant and it has long leaves that resemble willow leaves.

But it’s not a willow. It grows from rhizomes in swamps or along the wet edges of streams, rivers, and ponds.  You can’t grow it in your garden; it has to have wet feet.

Sharon Leadbitter found this one along the Allegheny River near the Tarentum Bridge.  I’ve seen it growing in Slippery Rock Creek, the Youghiogeny River at Ohiopyle, and in Chartiers Creek at Boyce-Mayview wetlands.

If you visit the water’s edge this weekend, keep an eye out for water willow.  You might find a large colony of it.

(photo by Sharon Leadbitter)

Musings on Peregrine Mortality

Peregrines
Smolder at Hilliard Road Bridge, Ohio, shortly before she died (photo by Chris Saladin)

29 June 2012

To put things into perspective… yesterday’s news about Blue’s death was sad but not unusual.

Juvenile peregrine falcon mortality is high.  Nearly two thirds don’t live to be one year old.  Their often quoted mortality rate is 62.5%.

Scientific research bears this out.  Marcel Gabhauer published his doctoral thesis on peregrine falcons in 2008 having studied urban and rural, wild-born and hacked birds in Ontario since 1995.  His findings showed that nest survival from hatching to fledging is high (95.8%) but first year survival is dramatically lower.  Of the chicks he was able to track for a year, only 36.5% of the wild-born birds and 31.6% of the hacked birds survived to their first birthday.  Only one out of three makes it.

My experience with the Cathedral of Learning peregrines is similar though I’m unable to track them for a year.  Each summer since 2008 at least one juvenile Pitt peregrine has died in Pittsburgh.  Interestingly, I didn’t begin to hear of the Pitt peregrines’ deaths until 2008 when my blog made me known as The Peregrine Lady.

Monitoring juvenile peregrines is a roller coaster experience. Dorothy and E2 know this much better than I do.  Yesterday evening I found them where I expected them to be – on the Cathedral of Learning on the side facing the scene of Blue’s accident.  E2 was gazing in that direction. Dorothy was in her mourning nook, a place she only uses just after one of her youngsters has died.

This dip in our roller coaster won’t last long.  The demands of the remaining juveniles will perk up Dorothy and E2.  The Pitt peregrines’ success stories will keep us going with Dorothy’s “kids” across the eastern U.S:

(photo of Smolder by Chris Saladin)