In the spring of 2015, Nature On The Go of Green Oak Twp, Michigan found a baby starling fallen from his nest. Since European starlings are invasive, no rehabber would raise the bird for release into the wild, so Nature On The Go decided to raise the starling as an educational ambassador.
As the starling matured he began to mimic phrases he heard from the people around him. For his role as an Animal Ambassador they taught him phrases that explain how starlings arrived in North America. After all, the starlings’ mimicry is an indirect reason why they were brought here.
Watch the video to hear this startling speak. He’s a “Shakespeare bird.”
It’s tree-planting season and a good time to remember that trees can be damaged by our good intentions. In the old days we staked every newly planted tree but we’ve since learned that for most tree plantings, stakes are a bad idea.
Tree trunks become strong from the ground up by swaying in the wind. When a tree is staked, it “thinks” it already has strong roots where it’s staked so it puts effort into growing tall instead of establishing roots. The trunk becomes strong above the yoke and remains weak below it. In addition the yoke may damage the trunk, further weakening the tree as shown above.
If your new tree has a big root ball it probably doesn’t need to be staked, though there are exceptions quoted here from the Davey Tree blog. You should use stakes on …
Bare-root trees or trees with a small root ball.
Trees planted in areas with lots of foot traffic, like a sidewalk or street.
New trees that can’t stand on their own or those that begin to lean.
Eucalyptus trees, mesquite hybrid trees, oleander trees and acacia trees.
Tall, top-heavy trees with no lower branches.
Young trees if you live in a very windy area or if the soil is too wet or loose.”
If you use stakes make sure to remove them at the next growing season. If you don’t, the tree will grow around them like this one did at Schenley Park. See more photos at How Stakes Hurt Trees.
Tree stake was never removed so the tree grew over it, Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
Comb-footed spiders (Anelosimus studiosus) have a lot of personality. These social cobweb spiders live in colonies of 40-100 individuals, build their webs around branches, and hunt cooperatively to capture large prey.
The spiders exhibit either aggressive or docile personalities. If you know what to look for you can tell the difference. In the evening aggressive A.studiosus attack each other and then retire to opposite corners of the web; docile spiders rest side by side. Aggressive spiders come out to attack when their web is disturbed, the docile ones stay inside.
What happens to these spiders when they’re hit by a tropical storm or hurricane? Is there a difference in which spiders survive?
A 2018 study led by Jonathan Pruitt of U.C. Santa Barbara tracked 240 Anelosimus studiosus colonies in seven states including Florida, Alabama and the Carolinas. For baseline data they recorded the locations and personalities of the spider colonies. Later they searched for spider webs after a tropical storm or hurricane had passed.
You might think it’s futile to look for cobwebs after hurricanes, but individual spiders do survive, stay on their home territory, and rebuild. While humans are picking up the pieces, the spiders are too.
It’s October but you wouldn’t know it by stepping outdoors. We’re still running the air conditioner and wearing summer clothes. Today’s low temperature of 68oF is the normal high for October 1 in Pittsburgh. Our 90oF high will be 22 degrees above normal. It feels like August.
It didn’t used to be this way. Do you remember when you used to turn on the heat in September or suffer because you delayed to save money? Ten years ago our furnace broke and we were cold! I wrote this on 1 October 2009:
The weather has been getting colder every day for a week. This morning it was in the upper 30s at dawn. By now most of you have turned on your heat, but not us. We’re toughing it out until we get a new furnace. The old one won’t turn on and rather than pay to fix it I thought we could cope without it until the furnace man comes with a new one on Friday.
Northern snakeheads (Channa argus) are predatory fish native to China, Russia and the Koreas. They prefer shallow stagnant freshwater and can survive in low oxygen locations because they can breathe the air. In fact they can live out of water for days where it’s moist and cool and are known to wriggle overland from pond to pond, earning them the nickname “walking fish.”
This top-level predator eats crustaceans, amphibians and other fish and can double its population in only 15 months. If you find one, watch out! They look like this.
All Snakeheads are distinguished by their torpedo shaped body, long dorsal and anal fins without spines, and toothed jaws. Northern Snakeheads are typically distinguished by a flattened, pointy head with long lower jaws.
They have teeth …
… and they can get really big! According to Wikipedia, a record 19.9 pound northern snakehead was caught — actually shot at night with a bow and arrow — at Mattawoman Creek in Charles County, Maryland in May 2018.
How did they get here? People release them. They’ve been kept in aquariums or raised on fish farms in the past, but it’s illegal to keep a live one now in North America. Not everyone knows this.
The first encounter with northern snakeheads in the U.S. did not go well. A breeding population was found in a pond in Crofton, Maryland in 2002. Officials were so worried about this species that they drained the pond and poisoned three adjacent ponds to kill every fish. A man later admitted to releasing an adult pair in the original pond, but the fish was out of the bag. It already had spread in the watershed.
Since then northern snakeheads have been found in Virginia, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, North Carolina, Arkansas, and B.C, Canada. New isolated discoveries always begin with someone releasing a fish. If the fish become established they spread throughout the watershed. When deemed appropriate, wildlife officials may poison newly infested ponds and kill all fish.
Fortunately Lance Mroz knew what to do. He identified the fish, killed it, froze it and reported it to the PA Fish and Boat Commission. If you ever catch one,
Participants at Schenley Park outing on 29 Sep 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
This morning 12 of us gathered at the Bartlett Shelter to kick off a bird walk in Schenley Park. The weather was very gray and cloudy, almost foggy, and we worked hard for every bird for more an hour and a half.
Then the sun came out at 10am and so did the birds. Our best sightings were in the last 15 minutes. We ran overtime to see them!
Our list below, 27 species, has my favorites in boldface type. There were so many birds in the last 15 minutes that I may have missed some. Here it is on eBird: https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S60218049
Mourning Dove 3 Chimney Swift 1 Turkey Vulture 1 Red-tailed Hawk 2 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 1 (First of fall) Red-bellied Woodpecker 8 Downy Woodpecker 1 Northern Flicker 5 Eastern Wood-Pewee 1 Eastern Phoebe 1 Blue Jay 18 American Crow 1 Carolina Chickadee 2 Carolina Wren 3 European Starling 2 Gray Catbird 2 Brown Thrasher 1 Wood Thrush 1 American Robin 16 House Finch 3 American Goldfinch 1 Song Sparrow 1 Common Grackle 100 (big flock flying over the golf course) Black-and-white Warbler 1 Magnolia Warbler 1 Black-throated Green Warbler 3 Northern Cardinal 6
Thanks to all for coming out today. Never expected it to be so great at the end!
p.s. Chipmunks did outnumber blue jays — barely — but common grackles beat them all.
Empty black walnut shell with holes (photos by Kate St. John)
This nutshell is empty and carved with large holes. Their shape and placement tell us who made them.
In the autumn black walnuts ripen and fall from the trees. They’re covered in yellow-green husks that exude a black stain when you open them.
Black walnut in husk, Schenley Park, 27 Sep 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
Squirrels don’t care about the stain. They chew off the husk and gnaw the wooden shell.
Fox squirrel chisels a black walnut (photo by Donna Foyle)
They make four holes, two on each side of the shell. The side that opens quickly is gnawed into one large hole. By their shape you can tell that a squirrel ate the nutmeat.
This fox squirrel gnawed a black walnut in Donna Foyle’s backyard in 2014. Find out how long it took him in How To Open A Black Walnut.
(photos by Kate St. John and Donna Foyle, per the captions)
Asters, Raccoon Creek State Park, Lake Trail, 27 Sep 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
It’s late September and asters are blooming throughout western Pennsylvania. I found several patches of purple asters yesterday on the Lake Trail at Raccoon Creek State Park.
These two may be the same species. They have similar leaves and their colors matched in real life though the camera shows them differently. It’s a trick of the light. Cameras are notorious for distorting purple / blue.
Asters, Raccoon Creek State Park, Lake Trail, 27 Sep 2019, 12.18p
I haven’t identified these flowers. My Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide has 10 densely packed pages of asters and that’s not all possible species.
Do you think fall warblers are confusing? Asters (and goldenrods) are the last frontier!
By the end of September the whining is over. Juvenile raptors, like this young red-tailed hawk, have left home to start life on their own. Now they hunt in silence. Loud begging scares their prey.
I miss the begging sounds of summer because they helped me find songbirds. The whining juvenile red-tailed hawk in the linked video below has attracted songbird attention.
These jelly roll clouds, called morning glories, are so rare that the only reliable place to find them is at the Gulf of Carpentaria during Australia’s spring, August to November. They form there because of Cape York Peninsula’s shape and orientation to the wind.
In photographs from above these clouds look peaceful. From the ground they are awe-inspiring, rolling across the landscape on their horizontal axis as shown in this video from Leelanau State Park, Michigan in 2016.
Morning glory clouds are extremely rare in the U.S. but I have an idea why one formed at Grand Traverse Bay. Notice the shape and orientation of the Leelanau Peninsula. It’s like Cape York on a smaller scale.
Read more about morning glories and why glider pilots love them in this vintage article: Morning Glory.
(photo and Gulf of Carpentaria map from Wikimedia Commons, video by Chad Bousamra on YouTube, Michigan map screenshot from Google Maps; click on the captions to see the originals)
