Yearly Archives: 2012

Winter Warbler?

Songbirds

It’s been an unusually warm winter with lots of rain and temperatures reaching the 60’s last week.

Because of the weather, the lakes are ice free so the northern birds we’d expect to see aren’t here.

On the other hand, there’s a hotspot of unusual birds in south central Pennsylvania.  The most amazing is this Townsend’s warbler in Cumberland County.

Townsend’s warblers breed in the Pacific Northwest and winter in Mexico.  This one must have had a compass error, so it flew the correct distance to reach Mexico but it went the wrong direction.

It ended up in Carlisle, PA where Meredith Lombard took its picture.

(photo by Meredith Lombard)

Solar Excitement

Weather & Sky
Solar flare at Active Region 1402, 23 Jan 2012, 0349 UTC (image from NASA SDO in the public domain)

28 January 2012:

Last weekend’s solar flare made the news with beautiful images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

On January 23 at 4am UTC (January 22 11pm in Pittsburgh) a huge “burp” of charged particles and magnetic fields burst off the sun from Active Region 1402.  The wave traveled at 2,200 km/second — 150 times slower than the speed of light — so we saw it before we “felt” it on January 24 around 1400 GMT (January 24, 9am EST, plus or minus 7 hours).

Major pulses from the sun can cause outages in the electric grid and interference with radio and TV broadcasts and communication devices.  The episode I best remember was when a pulse killed Telstar 401 and stopped PBS broadcasting until they could find a new satellite and we re-pointed our station dish.

Earth’s magnetic field protects us from these “burps” but it gets distorted while doing so.  In normal times the solar wind squashes our magnetic field on the earth’s sunward (day) side and elongates on the night side.  Here’s a diagram from NASA showing how that works with the sun positioned at top left.

Diagram of Earth’s magnetic field (image by NASA, in the public domain)

In a solar flare event the magnetic bulge on the night side gets longer, the loops break and they “flap in the breeze.”  When the field snaps back it releases energy that whacks the earth’s upper atmosphere, causing the beautiful northern lights and sometimes electro-magnetic interference.

Meanwhile nothing much happened here on Earth except …

On Tuesday morning January 24 around 7am, an electrical transformer at WQED blew up and burned.  It was quickly extinguished and the damage was minor, but it left us without electricity.  Thanks to our generator we remained on the air and on the web.  All day Tuesday and into the night, the electricians worked hard to hook up a temporary power feed.  Unfortunately, when they switched us back to house power on Wednesday morning at 2am an internal surge tripped a breaker on our emergency grid and we went off the air and off the web.

So it’s been an exciting week for us in technology at WQED.  The flare probably didn’t cause our electrical problem but the timing was quite a coincidence.

Watch what happened on the sun in this cool video from NASA SDO:

(All photos from NASA. Click on the images to see the originals.)

Learn a Bird, Teach a Computer

Quiz

When you play today’s “quiz” you’ll be teaching a computer how to think.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is building a new interactive bird identification tool and they need your help.  In yesterday’s eNewsletter they wrote:

To help you identify birds online, the Cornell Lab’s web team is building a new tool called “Merlin.” Merlin will use artificial intelligence to ask questions and provide suggestions to help you identify what you saw. First, though, Merlin needs to know how people observe and describe birds. Help populate Merlin’s “brain” by trying Mark My Bird, an online activity that asks 18 questions about a species. Play as often as you like to help us build Merlin faster!

Mark My Bird looks like a quiz but it’s actually gathering data for Merlin’s brain.  It will show you a photo of a mystery bird but don’t worry, it’s going to identify that bird for you.  All you have to do is choose the bird’s group (or say Not Sure), then click on the bird’s body parts and checkmark the colors and patterns you see.

I tried it myself and it’s pretty cool. You can use it to quiz your own bird skills or identify the mystery bird.

Click here or on the screenshot to play Mark My Bird.  Teach the computer how to think!

(screenshot from Cornell Lab of Ornithology Mark My Bird interactive tool)

Raven or Crow?

Crows & Ravens

Ravens are rare in Pittsburgh but they’ve been seen this winter.  We’re also seeing thousands and thousands of crows.

How do you tell the difference between a raven and a crow?

Watch this video from The Raven Diaries and you’ll learn how.

The video was created by Rick and Diana Boufford who live in Newport Beach, California where there are both species of birds.  Visit www.theravendiaries.com for more information.

(video from The Raven Diaries via YouTube)

Winter Trees: White Oak

Schenley Park, Trees, Winter Weeds & Trees


Continuing the oak theme, today’s tree is the Eastern White Oak (Quercus alba).

As I said last week, Pittsburgh’s natural habitat is the oak-hickory forest.  In this part of North America oak species fall into two groups: reds and whites.  Red oaks are typically found in oak-dominated forests.  White oaks are so versatile they can grow in many habitats and have one of the widest ranges of any tree on the continent.

White oaks are majestic trees — as much as 150 feet tall, four feet in diameter, and 600 years old.  Like all oaks they produce acorns and have clusters of buds at their twig tips.  You can distinguish them from red oaks because their leaves have rounded lobes, their buds are smaller and blunter, their acorn cup scales are paler, knobby and the cup is not hairy inside, and their bark is paler, scaly and sometimes peeling.

The blunt buds, clustered at the twig tip, are pictured above.  As you can see, a few dried leaves remain on the tree in the winter.

The bark at the base of the tree is a good hint to this tree’s identity because it looks as if part of it was rubbed off.  Here are two examples.  (It’s easier to see the “rubbed off” appearance in real life than in photos.)

Look up the tree trunk and you’ll see paler, slightly peeling bark and a few dried leaves.

White oaks are famous for producing bumper crops of acorns every 4-10 years.  A single tree can produce 2,000 to 7,000 acorns so you can imagine the effect in an area with a lot of white oaks.  One fall in the Laurel Highlands there were so many acorns that I found it hard to hike without slipping on them!

Squirrels eat acorns from both red and white oaks but they treat them differently.  They bury red oak acorns and eat the white oaks’ right away.  Red oak acorns are full of tannin (less palatable) and don’t sprout until their second spring.  White oaks have less tannin and sprout in their first spring.  Burying reds and eating whites makes sense.  Red oak acorns can be placed in underground storage.  White oaks would sprout before the squirrel could get back to them.  Smart squirrels, eh?

(photos by Kate St. John)

Feather Facts to Impress Your Friends

Bird Anatomy
Namaqua sandgrouse (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Did you know that… ?

  • For most birds, feathers make up 5-10% of their total weight but are two to three times heavier than their skeletons.
  • Tundra swans have 25,000 feathers, 80% of which are on their heads and necks.
  • Doves and herons have some specialized “powderdown” feathers whose barbule tips disintegrate into a talcum-like powder.  These feathers grow continuously so they can do this.
  • Dark feathers are stronger than white feathers.  The dark pigment melanin provides strength.
  • Feathers are held in place on birds’ bodies by follicle muscles. Some birds, such as nightjars, experience “fright molt” when something scary causes those muscles to relax and the bird loses some feathers.
  • Owls have fringe-like leading edges on their primary feathers and long filament-like barbules on other feathers.  These features reduce air turbulence, allowing owls to fly silently.
  • Archaeological evidence indicates feathers first appeared on meat-eating dinosaurs.    (Peregrines’ ancestors!)
  • Desert sandgrouse in Africa have specialized belly feathers that can absorb and carry water.  The male sandgrouse flies as much as 18 miles from his nest to a watering hole where he soaks his belly in the water.  He then flies back to the nest where his young squeeze his belly feathers in their bills to get a drink.  (Pictured above is a male Namaqua sandgrouse in the Kalahari.)

(photo by Chris Eason, via Creative Commons License on Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the photo to see the original.)

Annual Eagle Watch at Kinzua Dam, Feb 4

Birds of Prey, Books & Events


If you want to see bald eagles in Pennsylvania, winter’s a great time to do it.

Bald eagles eat fish so they always live near open water.  When the lakes freeze they move to the rivers.  When the rivers freeze they congregate near the open tailwaters at dams.

And thus was born the Annual Eagle Watch at Kinzua Dam in Warren County, PA.

This year’s event at the Big Bend Recreation Area will be held on Saturday, February 4 from 8:00am to 2:00pm.   View the eagles through spotting scopes at three observation areas:  Big Bend Visitor Center (warm up indoors with hot chocolate!), Riverside Watchable Wildlife Trail and Viewing Platform, and on the dam.  Those over 18 must show a photo ID to walk out on the dam.

In addition to eagle watching David Donachy of the PA Game Commission will present a program on the success of Pennsylvania’s bald eagle restoration, and Kinzua Cachers will hold a geomeet to find several temporary caches in the area.

The event is free, sponsored by US Army Corps of Engineers, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, Penn Soil Resource Conservation and Development Council, Kinzua Cachers, and the Allegheny Outdoor Club.

While you’re up at Kinzua Dam you’re just 10 minutes from downtown Warren where WQED-FM’s morning host Jim Cunningham recommends the Plaza Restaurant.  Staying overnight?  You can get a discount at the Warren Hampton Inn if you tell them you’re coming for the Eagle Watch.

Click here for more information, or call Steve Lauser, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, at (814)726-0661 or Bill Massa, Allegheny Outdoor Club, at (814)723-2568.

Keep your eyes open for eagles as you drive upstate.  Eagle sightings are more common than ever before.  Here are some recent sightings in Pennsylvania.

(photo by Steve Gosser, near Crooked Creek dam in Armstrong County)

Injured Peregrine Found in Monessen

Peregrines

Yesterday I got a call from Wildlife Conservation Officer Beth Fife.  An injured adult peregrine had been found in the mills area of Monessen, Pennsylvania, shown above in a photo linked from www.city-data.com.

Beth had already called the Game Commission’s peregrine falcon coordinator, Art McMorris, to tell him the band numbers but he was not available.  While waiting for Art’s return call she wondered about the bird’s identity.

I looked up the bands as best I could.  The bird was not from Pittsburgh or the Midwest.  My friend Karen Lang said, “Maybe it’s from New York.”   And she was right.

Juanita Woods identified her as Callidora, hatched at the Times Square nest, Rochester, NY in 2010.  Her father is Archer, grandson of Mariah and Kaver of Kodak.  Her mother is Beauty, daughter of Dorothy and Erie at the University of Pittsburgh.  Callidora is Dorothy’s granddaughter.

The news from Beth was not particularly good.  Callidora is at a rehabber’s with a badly injured wing and will be x-rayed to determine the extent of the damage.  I don’t know the name or location of the rehabber and have no other news.  [Update: She was at Wildlife Works in Youngwood, PA.  Click here for more information.]

I expect to hear more next week as business gets underway again.  Not only is it the weekend, but it’s snowing and sleeting here with a projected 2-inch snow+ice accumulation.  Things have slowed down considerably.

For information on the town where Callidora was found, see City-Data’s website on Monessen.

I hope Callidora will be OK.

SAD NEWS, Jan 21, 1:50pm:   Beth Fife reports, “With further inspection and care of the wing, they found it to be totally shattered and non repairable.  The bird was put down.  Sad, but it’s not suffering anymore.”

Fly free, Callidora.

.

(photo of Monessen linked from the Monessen, Pennsylvania webpage at City-data.com)

Winter Tree Walk at Schenley Park, Feb 18, 1:00pm

Books & Events, Schenley Park, Winter Weeds & Trees

 

Here’s a chance to practice the winter tree identification skills I’ve been blogging about on Wednesdays.

On Saturday, February 18, 1:00pm – 3:00pm, I’ll lead a Winter Tree Walk in Schenley Park.

Meet me at the Schenley Park Cafe and Visitor Center at 1:00pm and we’ll walk the trails to see some of the trees I’ve highlighted.

Bring a field guide or the Winter Tree Finder, binoculars or a hand lens so you can see the details, and quarters for the parking meter (unmetered parking is a bit of a walk).  Prepare for cold weather and dress warmly.  We’ll be moving at the speed of botany (slowly!) so expect to be standing out in the cold.

For directions to the Visitor Center, click here and scroll down to the heading: “Directions to Schenley Park Cafe and Visitor Center, 101 Panther Hollow Road.”  The Visitor Center is open from 10am to 4pm with food and hot chocolate.  Come early and eat lunch.  Here’s the menu.

I hope February 18 will be as nice as the day in December when I took this photo.  Watch my blog on the morning of February 18 for final details.

Hope to see you then.

(photo by Kate St. John)

p.s. If you have questions, leave a comment.  I moderate the comments so I’ll be able to read and respond privately.