9 March 2024

The weather doesn’t know what to do with itself in Pittsburgh. Some days it rains all day (today for instance). Some days it’s hot and sunny. Some days it’s chilly and overcast. This week we saw it all.

On Monday and Tuesday hot sunny weather (74-75°F) encouraged everyone to get outdoors. I waited a while to get a photo, above, without a lot of people in it. Just around the bend the sun was so low in the sky at 4:40pm that it made long shadows.

That beautiful day came after a foggy rainy weekend, seen at Duck Hollow below. The Monongahela River was running high because of all the rain.

All kinds of critters were busy this week including a striped red ant on a trail in Schenley Park. What ant is this? Can you tell me its name?

On Monday I also found two refugees from water-logged soil on a sidewalk in Oakland. Not earthworms, these are invasive Asian jumping worms. Not good! Click here to see a brief clip of them squirming.

On Thursday 7 March I found new leaves of (maybe) corydalis at Todd Nature Reserve.

And on the way home I stopped at the Tarentum Bridge to check on the peregrines. The male was perched nearby while the female incubated eggs in the nest. This (lousy) digiscope photo shows the female’s wingtips visible in the nest box as she incubates with her tail toward us. This is early for most peregrines in southwestern PA but not for this bird. She’s always early.

p.s. Don’t forget to turn your clocks AHEAD tonight. (egads! I fixed that awful typo. Thanks, everyone, for pointing it out.)

(photos by Kate St. John)