Short-eared owl in Lawrence County, Jan 2025 (photo by Steve Gosser)
17 January 2025
When Debbie and I went to Lawrence County last Sunday we knew we would see sandhill cranes but our real target, our Fingers Crossed hope, was to see a short-eared owl (Asio flammeus). Friends had told us about them and we’d seen Steve Gosser‘s stunning photos on Facebook.
We were very lucky. While we were watching the cranes a photographer drove by and told us where to find a female (dark plumage) roosting near the ground. On our way there we saw a paler bird, probably male, perched on playground equipment.
Short-eared owl, female, 14 Dec 2024 (photo by Steve Gosser)
I wore the wrong boots last Sunday because I forgot how much we would stand in the snow to watch birds. My feet were cold. It made me grumpy. I was not liking winter at that point.
But when I got home I put the bad boots away and pulled out my Sorrels and I’ve been happy ever since. Winter has some big advantages. Steve describes it perfectly.
p.s. The weather next week will be particularly challenging, especially on Monday 20 January when Pittsburgh’s high will be 9°F with a low of -5°F. Bundle up!
Today we live among the descendants of the Terror Birds. Who were they? And who are they now?
Terror Birds (Phorusrhacids) were a genus of large, flightless, carnivorous birds that thrived in South America from 43 million to 100,000 years ago. Wikipedia describes them as “among the largest apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic era.”
As you can see from this diagram the largest of them could easily have eaten a human and, because Homo sapiens evolved around 300,000 years ago, we were on Earth before they went extinct. We would have been in danger but we were in Africa, separated by an ocean from these terrifying ancestors of modern birds.
DNA studies in 2024 refined the phylogenetic supertree of birds placing Terror Birds as ancestors in the clade Australaves, the group that evolved in South America and Australia. Click on the image below to see a larger version of the diagram.
Because the diagram has hundreds of tiny details I’ve hand-drawn the Terror Bird section starting with their nearest living relative, the seriema. Notice who else is descended from the Terror Birds!
Let’s take a photographic journey through the tree.
First come the seriemas, who stand alone without other relatives. These South American birds have a lifestyle and appearance similar to the secretarybird of Africa, though they are not related. Here a red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata) kills a snake.
Leucistic red-tailed hawk in Northampton County, PA, 4 Jan 2025 (photo by Brenda Lindsey)
9 January 2025
There were several hours of excitement on New Years Day when a snowy owl showed up at Pymatuning. That same day in Northampton County, PA Steve Magditch thought he too may have found a snowy owl but his camera lens revealed a common bird in uncommon plumage, a leucistic red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).
Brenda Lindsey was excited to capture these photos on 4 January.
Leucistic Red-tailed Hawk! I set out this morning to (maybe) see it. (I can’t believe I found it!) Thank you Steve Magditch and Kathleen Itterly Dimmich for your prior postings of this unique Bird of Prey!
This white hawk is called leucistic, not albino, because it has normal-colored eyes and at least one normally colored feather. See the red feather(s) in its tail.
Leucistic red-tailed hawk in Northampton County, PA, 4 Jan 2025 (photo by Brenda Lindsey)Leucistic red-tailed hawk in Northampton County, PA, 4 Jan 2025 (photo by Brenda Lindsey)
Though rare, leucistic red-tailed hawks occur throughout their range in North America with a lot of variation in their plumage. Some are spotted, some are blotchy.
See additional photos of white red-tails and learn about leucism in this vintage article.
Merlin! When I found this exuberant photo by Eric Ellingson I had to find a merlin.
Two days ago, just before sunset, I went looking for them at Schenley Park golf course where they usually hang out in winter. I spent 40 minutes waiting and watching from the highest lookout and walking past all their favorite haunts.
Nothing.
So I went back to my car and there was a merlin perched high in the tree above it. I told the bird “Don’t go anywhere!” as I ran to get my scope.
Merlin at Schenley Park, 30 Dec 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Soon a second merlin came in with an evening snack. Slight tussle between them and the newcomer claimed the perch and ate its meal.
Merlin eating its evening meal at Schenley Park, 30 Dec 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Then it turned to watch the waning light and left in a streak, flying low over the golf course to its roost.
On 14 November The Allegheny Front described oil pollution on the Monongahela River that’s been happening for more than two years. Monitored by Three Rivers Waterkeeper since May 2022, an oil sheen sometimes covers the water from bank to bank for three miles, all the way to McKeesport. This can’t be good for our bald eagles who nest along on the Mon and eat fish from its water.
“These are pretty serious sheens,” said Captain Evan Clark, a boat captain for Three Rivers Waterkeeper. “When I’m boating around up there, my boat is running through a heavy rainbow sheen that can extend from one bank of the river to the other, literally for miles.”
In August 2022, an EPA inspector reported oil discharge from the plant’s outfall, or drainage pipe, and found “substantial rainbow sheening could be seen for approximately 3 miles downstream.”(*)
Last year the Pennsylvania Dept of Environmental Protection (DEP) determined the oil was coming from a USS Irvin Works outfall and “issued a compliance order requiring U.S. Steel to deploy absorbent booms, investigate the cause of the releases and implement a plan to fix any problems.” — The Allegheny Front
But a year later the problem has not been addressed and it happened again last month. DEP has proposed setting a water pollution permit level on that outfall. Three Rivers Waterkeeper wants real-time monitoring on it.
Meanwhile, oil-covered water cannot be good for our bald eagles who touch the water’s surface and eat fish and waterfowl captured in or on the water.
During an oil sheen episode the pair that nests at USS Irvin Works cannot hunt the Mon for three miles downstream of their nest without being exposed to the oil. This is a lot of territory to avoid with hungry chicks in the nest.
Employees at USS Irvin Works are so proud of their bald eagle pair that the company installed an eaglecam to watch them at the nest. Surely USS Irvin Works will clean up this outfall to protect everyone who uses the Mon including their favorite eagles.
Read more about the issue here at The Allegheny Front …
Witch hazel, Schenley Park, 15 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
16 November 2024
This week I found witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) blooming in Schenley Park and was startled by a whoosh of wings that passed right in front of me below eye level. I was so startled that I screamed even though I knew that …
The whoosh was an immature red-tailed hawk zipping by to catch a mouse near the wall. In stealth mode the hawk did not flap his wings but he flew pretty close to me. If I didn’t like birds I might have been freaked out. He caught the mouse and I took his picture when he settled down.
Immature red-tailed hawk that buzzed past me in Schenley Park, 15 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
By now most oaks have lost their leaves so the predominant color in Schenley and Frick is brown. Brown on the ground and lots of bare trees.
Brown fallen leaves, Schenley Park, 15 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
In Schenley Park you can easily see through the woods at ground level because the deer have eaten all the thickets.
In Frick Park I spotted an unusual patch of green, probably an alien plant, so I went down there to check it out.
A green patch in the distance at Frick Park. What is it? 12 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Sure enough, this is an alien — stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), native to Eurasia and Africa. Deer eat stinging nettle in spring and summer but are shunning it at this time of year.
A patch of stinging nettle in Frick Park, 12 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
By now the only place to find brilliant reds is in the sky.
Sunrise in Pittsburgh, 10 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Last spring during the nesting season I was so distracted by peregrines that I neglected to check on a merlins’ nest reported in Highland Park. By the time I got over there the young had fledged, the merlins were gone, and a small group of American crows were inspecting the area and commenting on what they found.
Crows are intensely interested in merlin nests because those nests may have been stolen from crows.
Merlins (Falco columbarius) never build a nest. Instead they search for crow or hawk nests, ideally in conifers, and take them over. If the target nest is unoccupied no problem but merlins are feisty and will try for an active crows’ nest by driving off the incubating female crow. If harassing her doesn’t work, they shout at her all day until another predator shows up and forces her to leave.
This often works because merlins are loud and fearless. They’ll drive away anything that irritates them including this raven (a merlin predator not a competitor).
Merlin attack! Raven flips upside down, Renews, NL, 10 July 2010 (photo by Trina Anderson)
However, in southwestern Pennsylvania there are now two species of crows — American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and fish crows (Corvus ossifragus) — and it makes a difference to the merlins’ success.
Not so with fish crows. Merlins and fish crows are new to each other so they haven’t worked out their differences and continue harassing for a much longer period. Few or none on either side have a successful nest. In the study of 25 fish crow nests in upstate New York, 40% failed due to merlin interference. The study tracked 31 merlin nests and found 66% of those made in fish crow nests did not fledge young.
Autumn and winter are good times for seeing merlins and fish crows in Pittsburgh. It would be interesting to find them interacting in spring and watch what happens.
p.s. Thank you to Don Nixon of PA Merlins for alerting me to this fascinating topic. The paper(*) is by Connor O’H. Loomis and Anne B. Clark (Binghamton University), John Confer (Ithaca College), Kevin J. McGowan (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) but it is behind a pay wall. The fish crow and merlin nesting studies continue beyond 2019 in Ithaca, NY at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Just because an animal has UV receptors in its eyes does not mean it can see ultraviolet light. A recent BBC video, below, reveals some surprising things about the use and perception of ultraviolet light in starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) and raptors, especially golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos). For instance:
Starlings and golden eagles both have UV receptors in their eyes.
Female starlings have feathers that reflect UV. The more UV a female reflects the more successful she is at breeding. Male starlings like the glow we humans cannot see.
UV light scatters more. If you can see UV light, it makes images blurry.
Raptors have UV receptors in their eyes but they cannot see it because their lenses filter it out. The golden eagle’s vision is sharper because he cannot see UV.
Scientists used to think kestrels hunted by seeing the UV reflective paths of rodent urine. Nope. Kestrel eyes filter out UV so that theory has been disproved.
Interesting conclusions:
Because I thought that raptors could see UV, I used to wonder how flashy UV-reflective songbirds managed to evade predators. Answer, the predators cannot see that flashy stuff!
UV light damages the eye so there is an advantage to not seeing it for most of one’s life.
Human eyes have UV receptors but we cannot see it because our lens filters out UV. There are exceptions based on age and lack of lenses.
Exception#1: Young people up to age 30 can see near UV, the wavelengths closest to our visible color range, per a 2018 Univ of Georgia study.
Exception#2: Those without lenses in their eyes can see near UV. This includes those born without lenses and those who had cataract surgery in the early days. Claude Monet had cataract surgery in 1923 with no lens replacement and could see near UV.
Are you going through Falconcam withdrawal? Don’t despair. Four falcons in Wisconsin are still on camera and nearly ready to fledge.
Click on the image above or this link at Instagram for a brief video of American kestrel nestlings (Falco sparverius), the smallest falcon in North America.
See them Live on the Wisconsin Kestrel Cam below … WOW! That was fast! All of them fledged within a day of this article and the Live Stream is closed for the year. The kestrels say, “See you next year!”
Saucer magnolia bud about to bloom, Pittsburgh, 18 March 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
23 March 2024
This week non-native flowering trees put on a show in the city of Pittsburgh. Originally from China and Japan their growing season is earlier than our native trees.
Star magnolia in bloom, Pittsburgh, 15 March 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
This month’s three-day spurts of highs in the 60s and 70s prompted the red maples to flower and start producing seeds.
Red maple already gone to seed, Pittsburgh, 18 March 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Last Saturday I visited Wolf Creek Narrows, almost an hour north of Pittsburgh, where the growing season is later than at home. There we found an interesting jelly fungi called witches butter (Tremella mesenterica) …
Witches butter fungi, Wolf Creek Narrows, 16 March 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
… and a decapitated skunk cabbage that allowed us to see the spadix inside. The hood usually covers this structure but something ate the hood. What animal could put up with the odor to eat that hood? And then the animal would vomit because the plant is toxic.
Skunk cabbage spadix revealed, Wolf Creek Narrows, 16 March 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
I promised you an owl.
Inspired by Steve Gosser‘s photo of an American woodcock at North Park Upper Fields on 4 March, two of us stood out in the cold on Thursday evening waiting for sunset and for American woodcocks to make their twittering courtship flights. The sky was clear and the moon was so bright that we had moon shadows. It was also 5°F colder than at home in the city and I brought the wrong gloves. Brrrr!
Despite the cold it was worth the trip. Half an hour after sunset three American woodcocks put on a show and two flew right past us on their way to the sky.
American woodcock, North Park Upper Fields, 4 March 2024 (photo by Steve Gosser)
But the big surprise of the evening came before the woodcocks. Karyn saw a great-horned owl fly out of the pines and land on top of a brush pile. The owl was hunting while the voice of a youngster begged for food from pines.
Meanwhile a second adult owl flew to a bare tree at the other end of the field where we could see its silhouette against the glowing sky. Though my cellphone is not good at distance photos, you can faintly see the ear tufts that prove that this second bird of prey is a great-horned owl.
Great horned owl, North Park Upper Fields, 21 March 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
