Yearly Archives: 2019

A Corvid Sweep

Crows & Ravens, Musings & News
Ravens in flight (photo by John Johnston via Flickr Creative Commons license)

31 December 2019

Sweep(noun): In sports, a sweep is a series in which a person or team wins all games.

During the Pittsburgh Christmas Bird Count (CBC) last Saturday I saw every member of the crow family that occurs in Pennsylvania. It was a Corvid Sweep in my own city neighborhood!

Twenty corvid species can be seen in the US. but Pennsylvania hosts only four: blue jay, American crow, fish crow, and common raven. Blue jays and American crows are common, but until this century ravens and fish crows were quite rare in Pittsburgh. This year’s CBC tallied 7 ravens and 10 fish crows in the 15-mile circle, swamped by the presence of 10,000 American crows. (*)

The ravens (Corvus corax) were a real surprise. A group of four circled up and played in the sky over Hazelwood Greenway. I heard them call as they landed on the tallest structure for miles around — the radio tower next to Calvary Cemetery. Woo hoo!

Fish crows (Corvus ossifragus) are under counted in Pittsburgh because they’re hard to identify. They look like American crows, just slightly smaller. The only reliable way to identify a fish crow is by its nasal voice. If he doesn’t speak we don’t know who he is.

Fish crow (photo by shell game on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

For sheer spectacle, though, nothing beats the winter crow flock coming in to roost. Claire Staples and I counted 10,000 from the roof of a parking garage near Trees Hall and we know we under counted, perhaps by half. This year the flock didn’t pre-roost west of us and, because buildings block the view, we never saw the crows that stream in from the Allegheny Valley and Shadyside.

But we did stop by the area of Bellefield, Bayard and Bigelow where 3,000 to 4,000 crows spend the night. This year they’ve abandoned Pitt’s campus, only two blocks away, and I think I know why. On December 18 at 5:00pm I was counting crows flying from Schenley Park toward Pitt when I saw the new resident female peregrine, Morela, escort them away from campus. Aha!

Crows fly in to roost in Oakland (photo by Kate St. John)

Hooray for the Corvid Sweep!

(photos by John Johnston via Flickr and Kate St. John)

(*) preliminary count as of 12/29/2019, before all the data is in.

To See Again The Stars

Weather & Sky
Milky Way at Tenerife (photo by Carl Jones on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

At the end of The Inferno, set in the year 1300, Dante and his guide Virgil escape from Hell climbing upward to reach the Earth. They’ve almost emerged when Dante looks through the opening ahead and sees the heavens above.

… we climbed up, he first and I behind him,
far enough to see, through a round opening,
a few of those fair things the heavens bear.
Then we came forth, to see again the stars.

— The Inferno by Dante Alighieri, translation by Robert & Jean Hollander

The heavens are still wondrous but most of us miss it. So much electric light floods the sky that we cannot see the stars. No Milky Way (above), no meteor showers (below).

Timelapse composite, Perseid meteor shower, 13 Aug 2015 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

This 7-minute video gives a glimpse of what we’re missing.

video embedded from Peaceful Cuisine on YouTube

To see the stars as Dante saw them we have to visit remote locations where the sky is dark. Click on the Milky Way photo at Tenerife (top) to see the sky in full screen splendor.

“Then we came forth, to see again the stars.”

p.s. This week we learned of an unexpected threat to viewing the stars: Thousands of tiny new satellites, launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, will obscure and confuse the astronomers’ view.

p.p.s. Stelle, meaning stars, is literally the last word in each of the three cantiche of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.

(photos from Carl Jones on Flickr and Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals. video by Peaceful Cuisine on YouTube)

Ball Ice On The Beach

Water and Shore, Weather & Sky
Ice balls at Stroomi Beach, Tallinn, Estonia, Dec 2014 (photo form Wikimedia Commons)

On rare occasions, winter weather and the sea conspire to make ice balls that stack on the beach when they roll ashore. This ball ice, about the size of softballs, covered Stroomi Beach at the Baltic Sea in Estonia in December 2014.

Ball ice is so rare that it made the news last month in Alaska and Finland. Similar to hail, it forms in bays where the water is relatively calm and just cold enough to make ice. A “seed” of ice or grit starts the process, then wind and gentle waves keep turning the floating ball as it grows.

Sometimes two cool things happen at once. In this tweet from NWS APRFC, a field of ice balls in Alaska acquired pointy hats when snow or rime accumulated on one side.

The prettiest ball ice by far were the thousands of white balls covering a beach on Hailuoto Island, Finland in early November. Ranging in size from golf balls to soccer balls, they made international news in photos by Risto Matilla. Island resident Ritva Rundgren filmed them for her Mrs. Santa Claus Finland blog.

Read more about Finland’s ice eggs and see a video of ice balls at Lake Michigan in this article from ScienceAlert.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original. Video embedded from Mrs. Santa Claus Finland)

Seen This Week In Schenley Park

Phenology, Schenley Park
Witch hazel flowering in Schenley Park, 24 Dec 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

I found three things in Schenley Park on Christmas Eve:

  • Witch hazel blooming,
  • Gray squirrels searching for nuts,
  • An eastern screech-owl at his roost.

Tiny spider webs span a few petals of the witch hazel flower shown above. These winter flowers are pollinated at night by owlet moths.

Squirrels were busy in Schenley Park this week. Some are so black that they look like a black hole in the landscape. Despite his color he’s just an eastern gray squirrel.

A gray squirrel who’s black in Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)

This particular eastern screech-owl has been spending the winter in Schenley Park since at least 2015-2016. I saw him on Christmas Eve but my cellphone photo was too poor to use. Here’s a photo I took in January 2017.

Eastern screech-owl, Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
Eastern screech-owl, Schenley Park, 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)

Don’t forget to spend time outdoors in late December. There are still cool things to see.

(photos by Kate St. John)

A Massive Rack

Mammals
Bull Elk near Benezette, PA (photo by Paul Staniszewski)

Though elk (wapiti) resemble white-tailed deer they are much larger and have huge antlers. A bull elk’s rack can reach 3.9 feet across and weigh 40 pounds! That’s twice as wide and five times the weight of the largest antlers on white-tailed deer.

Like all Cervids elk rub their antlers on trees to remove the velvet that coated the bone while it was growing. The velvet had nerves in it so the bull learned the dimensions of his antlers as they grew. When the rack is complete he remembers how big it is. This usually keeps him out of trouble when he rubs on trees or spars with another bull.

This month Paul Staniszewski captured photos of a bull elk rubbing his antlers and grooming in Benezette, PA. It’s amazing how the bull maneuvers in the tight space among the trees. What a massive rack!

  • Antler rub (photo by Paul Stansizewski)

(photos by Paul Staniszewski)

Luring Fish With His Cape

Bird Behavior, Water and Shore
Black heron at Marievale Nature Reserve, South Africa (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

A black dome of feathers stands hunched in a marsh in Africa.

Odd as he looks, he’s ignored by the cattle egrets.

Black heron near cattle egrets at Marievale Nature Reserve, South Africa (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

When he raises his head you can see he’s a black heron (Egretta ardesiaca).

Black heron raises his head at Marievale Nature Reserve, South Africa (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

His cape lures the fish to the darkened water and cuts the glare so he can see below. This behavior is called canopy feeding.

Watch him in action in the tweet below.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

Oh, Christmas Tree

Books & Events, Trees
Scots pine (photo by Howard F. Schwartz, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org)

If you have a live Christmas tree, it’s probably one of sixteen species of fir, spruce, pine, cypress or cedar. Many people prefer firs for their soft needles, but firs dry out quickly and drop their needles fast. One year our tree dropped its needles before Christmas!

One species, the Scots or Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris), doesn’t lose its needles even when it’s completely dry. I’ve seen Scotch pines put out for trash collection in January that looked as if they were freshly cut. There’s a down side though, as described at The Spruce:

You’ll want to wear gloves when decorating a Scotch pine since its needles can be sharp as pins!

The 10 Best Christmas Trees You Can Buy — The Spruce
Scots pine branch (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

If the tree was sheared closely there’s no room to insert your hand or an ornament. Ouch, Christmas tree!

Scots pine at a tree farm (photo by Steven Katovich, Bugwood.org)

However Scotch pines have this advantage, and so do other live trees: If you feed birds in your backyard, place your old Christmas tree near the feeders to provide winter cover for birds.

(photos from Bugwood.org and Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

Here To Stay Is The New Bird

Songbirds
Male northern cardinal (photo by Steve Gosser, 2010)

This week is much too warm for snow in Pittsburgh but we can dream as we listen to seasonal music. A favorite is Winter Wonderland, written in Pennsylvania in 1934, that includes these famous lines:

Gone away is the bluebird 
here to stay is a new bird.  
He sings a love song 
as we go along 
walking in a winter wonderland.”  
— Winter Wonderland

Back then eastern bluebirds left northern Pennsylvania in the winter but a new bird had arrived and its population was growing. The song’s writer, Richard Bernhard Smith, may have been referring to northern cardinals.

Originally from the South, cardinals arrived in Pennsylvania in the early 1900s in response to habitat change and warmer winters. As soon as they could survive year-round this new bird was here to stay.

By now our climate is so much warmer that Carolina wrens, Carolina chickadees and red-bellied woodpeckers are additional new birds in Pennsylvania. Nowadays bluebirds linger until it’s quite cold in Honesdale, PA, the town that inspired the song.

New birds find it easy to stay in our not-so-wintry wonderland.

(photo by Steve Gosser)

Bird Migration on Merchant Ships

Migration

This 9-minute video, filmed on merchant ships by Odysseas-Froilan Papageorgiou, provides a unique perspective on migratory birds.

Terrestrial birds that migrate over the ocean will land on ships to rest and refuel, especially during bad weather. Some birds are exhausted by the time they land. The ships attract insects that are eaten by songbirds. The songbirds attract birds of prey and shrikes.

The video showcases 70 species seen during Europe voyages. Each half of the video is in taxonomic order. My favorites were the birds of prey and a colorful bird that was new to me — the black-headed bunting. Don’t miss the hobby, the peregrine and the long-eared owl.

Best Bird is saved for the end!

(video by Odysseas Froilan on YouTube)