Yearly Archives: 2012

Try Not To Say Ewwww

Insects

In the past week my cat and I have had some excitement when I turn on the kitchen light in the morning.  Sometimes we’re startled by a 100-legged bug that zooms across the floor to hide.  I jump back and Emmalina (Emmy) jumps forward to chase it.

Eeewww!  I’m repulsed by house centipedes but a book called Despicable Species by Janet Lembke taught me these critters help me indirectly.

House centipedes (Scutigera coleoptrata) are nocturnal raptors, the owls of the bug world.  They eat a wide variety of live prey including spiders, silverfish, ants, termites, bedbugs and cockroaches which they catch by running them down.  For this they need to be fast.

With rigid bodies their speed comes from their legs.  Amazingly house centipedes don’t have 100 legs.  Adults have 15 pairs of very long jointed legs (yes, only 30) with extra muscles that allow them to achieve a top speed of 1.3 feet per second very quickly.  The two longest legs in the back mimic antennae and the two shortest in the front are modified to sting and kill their prey.  The stingers sound scary but are very small and harmless to humans.   House centipedes can even lose a few legs to get away if captured.

Because they don’t have wax on their exoskeleton, centipedes must rest during the day in damp, dark environments so they don’t dry out.  They prefer basements and crawl spaces (I have both) and are sometimes found in the bathtub because they look for a damp place to rest.

Like many other bugs, house centipedes have a spurt of visibility in the spring.  It’s the sight of all those legs that make my scalp crawl.  I couldn’t even use an illustration of the entire bug for this post because I can’t bear to look at all those legs.

It’s reason against emotion.  Now that I know they help me, I am trying very hard not to say “Eeewww.”

(close-up of a house centipede from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original)

If You’re Visiting Acadia…

Books & Events

Every year I blog about Maine in early September because my husband and I always Acadia National Park at that time.

In fact we’ve vacationed in Maine for nearly 30 years and we always stay at the same bed and breakfast, The Harbourside Inn, run by the Sweet family in Northeast Harbor.

What has drawn us to the same place for more than two decades?  The beauty of Acadia National Park, the Harbourside’s peace and quiet, and the Sweet family’s warm hospitality.

Recently Ann Sweet emailed me that they’ve updated their website, so you can see for yourself.

If you have a hankering to visit Acadia and like to stay at bed-and-breakfasts, check out The Harbourside Inn.

They’re open mid-June to mid-September.

(photo courtesy The Harbourside Inn, Northeast Harbor, Maine)

 

p.s. I just checked the Acadia website and see that as of March 26 several trails are closed due to peregrine falcon nesting.  Way to go, peregrines!

Festivals and Celebrations

Books & Events

Late April and early May are filled with ways to enjoy birds and nature.  Here are just a few of the many events that celebrate Spring near Pittsburgh.

Celebrations:

Festivals:  Want to see a lot of birds?  Want to learn from the top birders in North America?  Here are three birding festivals within a half-day drive of Pittsburgh, listed in date order.

And there are plenty more birding festivals in the works.  Check out the Festival Finder at Bird Watchers’ Digest to find one near you.

Happy birding!

 

p.s.  Did I miss something?  Leave a comment to tell us about your favorite event.

(photo of birders at the Magee Marsh boardwalk linked from BirdWatchingDaily.com. Photo courtesy of the Biggest Week in American Birding. Click on the image to see the original and accompanying article.)

Why Birds Get Here Last

Migration
Ruby-throated hummingbirds migration, 14 April 2012 (image from hummingbirds.net)
Ruby-throated hummingbirds migration, 14 April 2012 (image from hummingbirds.net)

13 April 2012

Earlier this week Libby Strizzi sent me an email with this ruby-throated hummingbird migration map and the question:  Why are the hummingbirds everywhere but here?

The map from hummingbirds.net is shown above with a black circle drawn to highlight the absence of hummers.  Hummingbirds have been seen east, west and north of northwestern Pennsylvania but not in the “hole.”

I’ll bet this is because northwestern PA is not on any spring migration flyways.

Migrating birds use four aerial “highways” to reach their breeding grounds in the spring.  Pennsylvania is fed by the Atlantic Flyway.  You can see this on the map below by Melissa Mayntz from her article 12 Types of Bird Migration at The Spruce.

Migration flyways map from Melissa Mayntz at The Spruce
North America migration flyways map (from Melissa Mayntz at The Spruce)

Notice the “hole” in northwestern Pennsylvania where the migration highway splits into two streams.  Early migrants are probably following the main highway and not stopping in PA’s northwest corner.  Other migrants fill in the gap but they arrive later.

And notice that two flyways meet in northwestern Ohio at Lake Erie.  Two sources of birds!  That’s why birders flock to Magee Marsh, Ohio in May.

We’ll just have to be patient.  They’ll get here when they get here.

(Hummingbird map from hummingbirds.net.  Flyways map by Melissa Mayntz from The Spruce.  Click on each map to see the original in context.)

Wham!

Mammals

On a recent walk in the park I paused to look and listen for birds.  Instead of birdsong I heard rough scrabbling above me.

As I turned to look, the scrabbling stopped.

Wham!

A squirrel lost his grip and fell straight down out of the tree. He landed flat on his belly and lay there blinking.

A second squirrel peered down from above.

Blink. Blink.

Game over! Lucky for him I wasn’t a red-tailed hawk.

He picked himself up and slowly climbed the tree. Huff. Huff.

And they resumed the chase, leaping from branch to branch.

 

(photo by Jeff Buck on Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the photo to see the original)

Pink And Blue

Songbirds

In some bird species it’s easy to identify males and females because they look so different. Northern cardinals are easy but adult European starlings are impossible to tell apart.

Or are they?

Did you know you can identify male and female starlings during the breeding season by the color at the base of their bills?  Males have blue or blue-gray at the base of their lower mandibles. Females have pink.

Just like the baby colors — girls are pink, boys are blue. You can see it with binoculars.

I’m examining starlings more closely now.

Guess which sex this one is.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

Out of Synch

Climate Change, Insects, Migration, Phenology

After stunningly warm temperatures in mid-March, Nature hit the pause button and produced lower than normal temperatures for more than a week. That hasn’t been enough to halt the onward march of plant development.

Trees are leafing out four weeks early and the insects that eat them are hatching too.   Tent worms are a case in point.

Eastern tent caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum) feast on trees in the Rose family, especially wild cherry, apple and crabapple.  Last summer the female moths laid their egg masses on the branches of host trees.  The eggs remained dormant all winter and then, just as the hosts’ buds began to swell, the eggs hatched and the larvae began to spin their tents.  In the past this happened in early May.

This year I saw the first tiny tent on April 1 at Moraine State Park.  A week later I found this much larger tent crawling with activity.

Most birds won’t eat tent caterpillars because they retain cyanide from the host plants but cuckoos eat them with relish.

Black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos spend the winter in South America and time their arrival to coincide with the emergence of eastern tent caterpillars.  A few yellow-billed cuckoos have been seen in the Gulf Coast states but the bulk of them aren’t in North America yet.  The leaves and tent caterpillars are four weeks ahead of schedule but the cuckoos are not.

What will happen to the cuckoos when the tasty caterpillars they expect to find have retreated to cocoons?  What will happen to our trees if this causes an excess of caterpillars?

Nature is out of synch.  Some things can cope, some cannot. We’ll just have to wait and see.

For more information on climate change’s effects on bird migration listen to this interview with Powdermill’s Drew Vitz on The Allegheny Front.

(photo by Kate St. John)

New Leaves

Phenology, Plants & Fungi, Trees

Over the weekend I hiked in both Greene and Allegheny Counties where I concluded there are more leaves on the trees near Pittsburgh than in the rural areas south of us.

I suspect that’s because Allegheny County is more densely populated, has more pavement and heated buildings, and thus is slightly warmer.

Sugar maple leaves in Greene County were still in the bud on Saturday but I found these newly unfurled leaves at Barking Slopes on Sunday.  They’re four weeks ahead of schedule.

I love how red and wrinkled they look.

It won’t be long before they’re green.

(photo by Kate St. John)

Whose Egg Is This???

Peregrines

7 April 2012

Yesterday the peregrine falcon drama in Rochester, New York went over the top in a twist so incredible that you wouldn’t believe it if you saw it on TV.

The story has a Pittsburgh connection — the two females are the daughter and granddaughter of Dorothy, the matriarch at the Cathedral of Learning — so I’ve been watching from afar.  I’ll try to replay it here.  Hold onto your hats!

You may remember last year’s Peyton Place when Dorothy’s daughter, Beauty, and granddaughter, Unity, both attempted to nest with the same mate, Archer.  He shuttled from Downtown to Kodak Park trying to keep his “wives”  happy but neither nest was successful.  In the months that followed Unity repeatedly challenged Beauty for the main nest site at the Times Square Building.

Archer was out of town on February 10 (he migrates) when Unity beat up Beauty and sent her to rehab.

With Beauty out of the picture and Archer still away on migration, Unity was courted by several males.  She refused their offers and when Archer returned on March 14 he chased them all away.

Unity was on the verge of laying her first egg when Archer lost a battle with another male on March 26.  He returned to the nest to show Unity his condition but he was so badly injured that he couldn’t stand up!  He faded into the background to nurse his wounds.

Three days later, on March 29, Unity laid her first egg.   If things had been calm she would have laid her second egg on March 31, but with an injured mate and unknown male victor she stopped laying eggs until she got to know the new guy.

Meanwhile, Beauty had fully recovered.  On April 2 she was released at Montezuma Wetlands Complex.  Everyone expected her to fly home to Rochester, only 50 miles away.

That was the last day anyone saw Archer.

In the meantime DotCa, a large male from Canada, tried to court and mate with Unity.  The two of them weren’t in synch yet. Their relationship needed more time when…

Unity died yesterday.  She was struggling with a pigeon and landed on the street where she was struck and killed by a car.

Unity dead, Archer missing and disabled, DotCa claiming his empty domain when…

Beauty came home last night!  She was gone almost two months, unaware of the drama that occurred in her absence.  She vividly remembered her rival and the territory she lost in February.  She returned, wondering where Archer was and obviously wary that her rival would appear at any moment.

At 7:25pm she approached her nest and … what is this?  An eleven-day-old egg!  Just one.  Whose egg is this???

What happens today is anybody’s guess.

The drama continues.

(photo from Camera 2 at Rfalconcam, Rochester, New York, 6 April 2012 at 7:25pm)

p.s. Follow the latest developments here on Rfalconcam.