This is the Biggest Week in American Birding at Magee Marsh, Ohio but it’s a big week for warblers in western Pennsylvania, too.
This 6-minute video from Cornell Lab of Ornithology shows warblers up close and provides tips on how to find them near home. Get some practice online before you go outdoors.
In eastern North America, spiral stalks of pleated leaves are often found in wet places where skunk cabbage grows. These pretty leaves are sometimes mistaken for skunk cabbage or wild leeks but a word to the wise: leave them alone. This plant is false hellebore (Veratrum viride) and it is very poisonous.
False hellebore is a member of the lily family that grows in wet meadows, hillside seeps, and along stream banks. It blooms in big greenish-yellow clusters but I’ve never seen its flowers, probably because I only notice the plant in late April when it isn’t blooming.
In fact, lots of people in Appalachia notice false hellebore in the spring because they’re looking for ramps (wild leeks, Allium tricoccum) to eat at home. Those who mistakenly eat false hellebore are in for a very bad time:
Symptoms of false hellebore poisoning include burning sensation in the mouth and throat, excessive salivation, cold sweat, headache, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain and gastrointestinal distress (diarrhea, gas), slow respiration and breathing difficulty, slow and irregular heartbeat, low blood pressure, and spasms or convulsions. If not promptly and effectively treated, false hellebore poisoning can cause general paralysis and even death. It is also known to cause birth defects.
At Cedar Creek Park, 20 April (photo by Kate St. John)
I remember a time in Pennsylvania when we could bushwhack through dense brush or lie down in a meadow without worrying about black-legged ticks and Lyme disease. In retrospect it seemed like Eden.
Nowadays we have to be careful, especially in May-August when the tiniest freckle-sized nymphs are active. Our best defense is to prevent ticks from getting on our skin. I’ve stopped bushwhacking and I don’t lie down in meadows to look at the sky.
My husband Rick, a poet himself, recommends Mark Doty’s Deep Lane book (here on Amazon). You can read a bit more of the poem here.
p.s. Indeed the distribution of ticks in PA has changed a lot since 1900, per a new study reported here, and with it comes more Lyme disease. See the Pittsburgh Quarterly, June 2019: Lyme: Pittsburgh’s Growing Epidemic
(photo of early Spring in Cedar Creek Park, Westmoreland County, PA by Kate St. John, photo of tick from Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original)
This spring some of you wondered if Hope’s behavior would be passed down to her female offspring. The way to find out is to watch one of her daughters nesting on camera (the behavior cannot be seen otherwise).
Are any of her daughters nesting? Here’s the status of Hope’s fledged offspring:
How many young has Hope fledged during her nesting years so far, 2010-2018? 10 fledglings: 4 at Tarentum Bridge plus 6 at Pitt.
How many of her offspring are banded? 8. (We can only re-identify her young if they are banded.)
Subtract known deaths. Of 8 banded offspring, 3 banded are known dead, 5 banded are presumed alive. (*)
How many of the living are female? 3
How many of her offspring have been reported nesting? NONE
How many of her offspring have been seen anywhere since they left Pittsburgh? NONE
In Hope’s nine years of nesting (2010-2018), she has averaged only 1.1 fledgling per year. None of them has ever been seen again.
By contrast Dorothy, the previous female peregrine at Pitt, averaged 3.0 fledglings per year. (If you don’t count her three elderly unproductive years her average was 3.7.) At least 12 of Dorothy’s kids went on to nest in the Great Lakes region, many on camera. Dorothy has children, grandchildren, great-grands and probably great-great-grands by now. She was a matriarch.
What is Hope’s legacy? So far as we know, nothing. We do know that none of her banded daughters are nesting on camera.
p.s. Hope’s potential of fledglings/year is higher than Dorothy’s. Hope averages 4.25 eggs per year at Pitt; Dorothy averaged 3.93. Hope has fewer fledglings/year because half of her hatchlings do not survive the hatching period.
(photo from the National Aviary falconcam at Univ of Pittsburgh)
(*) Living offspring: We will never know the fate of Hope’s 2 unbanded offspring because we cannot identify them. If they are both alive then Hope has 7 living offspring. Due to the 60% mortality rate among young peregrines, it is statistically likely that Hope has only 4 living offspring from 2010-2018, not 7.
.Details: Hope: 10 fledgings/8 years = 1.1 Dorothy: 43 fledgings/14 years = 3.0 –or– 41 fledglings/11 years = 3.7
Have you noticed that the Pitt peregrines’ nest is messy now? Here’s how it happened.
This Day in a Minute video from Tuesday 30 April 2019 shows 12 hours of the Pitt peregrines’ activities in 60 seconds. If you watch carefully you’ll see:
The chicks were fed four times on Tuesday. You can count a feeding every time Hope has her back to the camera.
Hope and Terzo switched off at the nest. Both tried to brood the chicks who are almost too big to cover. Hope had the morning shift, Terzo the afternoon, except…
Heavy rain approached at 3pm, so Hope sheltered the chicks during and after the rain.
Right after the rain, Terzo delivered (off camera) a fully feathered black bird. Hope plucked it at the nest. Instant mess!
Yesterday the chicks were 8+ days old — too old to brood — so Hope and Terzo often leave them on their own and guard them nearby. You can’t see the Hope and Terzo guarding the chicks because they perch above or on top of the camera.
If you like to watch the peregrine falcon family on camera at the Cathedral of Learning you can do so now without fear that the mother peregrine, Hope, will eat her offspring.
Every year, on camera, Hope has killed and eaten some but not all of her young while they are hatching. Hope does not harm fluffy white chicks and she does not harm eggs that have not pipped. The only danger time is when the live chick inside the egg has pipped the shell and is hammering to open it. It takes the chick up to 72 hours to open the shell from pip to hatch. That period, and the wet-and-pink time just after hatching, are the most dangerous for Hope’s young.
I’ve seen the Swainson’s thrush and Swainson’s hawk. My goal last weekend was to hear and see a Swainson’s warbler.
Like the other two birds the Swainson’s warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii) was named for English ornithologist William J. Swainson (1789-1855) but unlike them he’s hard to find.
To begin with, Swainson’s warblers don’t breed in Pennsylvania. The northernmost corner of their range is a 3.5 hour drive from Pittsburgh. Three of us went to New River Gorge, West Virginia.
Breeds in southern forests with thick undergrowth, especially canebrakes and floodplain forests in lowlands and rhododendron-mountain laurel in the Appalachians.
A week ago I received a message from the USA National Phenology Network that hemlock woolly adelgids would hatch very soon in Pittsburgh and the southern Appalachians. This is worrisome because the nymphs are the active phase of this forest pest.
Originally from Japan, hemlock woolly adelgids (Adelges tsugae) kill eastern hemlocks in 4-20 years by locking on where the needle meets the stem and sucking the lifeblood out of the tree (closeup at top).
The adults are sedentary, attached to a tree. The nymphs, however, are tiny and mobile. They blow on the wind and hitchhike on clothes, equipment, birds and animals. They spread very easily just after they’ve hatched.
The message above says “You should see active nymphs” but you won’t. At 1/100th of an inch they’re smaller than a grain of sand, almost microscopic. And yet, their effect is devastating.
Hemlock woolly adelgids have already killed up to 80% of the hemlocks on parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway and in Shenandoah National Park. They are eating their way through the Great Smoky Mountains, shown below, and they’re killing hemlocks in Pennsylvania.
We won’t know how far they’ve spread this spring until they reveal their presence next fall when the females deposit woolly egg sacs on the undersides of hemlock branches.
Poison ivy, young leaves, 25 April 2016 (photo by Kate St. John)
Trees are not the only plants leafing out right now, so are two irritating plants.
Poison Ivy:
The young leaves on woody stems (above) look a lot like the new leaves of ash or maple saplings, but don’t be fooled. This is poison ivy.
Look at the plant from above to count 3 leaves. Notice that the stem on the middle leaf is much longer than the other two, a telltale sign of poison ivy.
Poison ivy, 24 April 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
Stinging nettle looks innocent until you touch it.
The stems and leaves are coated with tiny hollow hairs that contain histamines and painful chemicals. When you touch the plant the hairs detach and become needles in your skin. Look closely to see them on the leaf edges and stems below.
Stinging nettle resembles a lot of other nettles including wood nettle. Look closely for those tiny hairs. … Ow!
