It’s been a long winter and I’m tired of observing birds in the cold. If you are too, let’s get together at the National Aviary on Thursday evening, March 20, for the National Aviary At Night, 5:00pm to 9:00pm.
Admission is half price (members are always free) and there’s open café service and a cash bar. I’m going to start my evening near the food. 
Click on the image above for more information and the menu.
Hope to see you there!
Fill your feeders and get ready for the bird count you can do in your pajamas.
For four days — tomorrow February 14 through Monday February 17 — you can participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count from the comfort of your home. All you need to do is count birds for at least 15 minutes, keep track of the highest number of each species you see, and record your count on eBird (instructions here). If you take pictures, submit them to the GBBC Photo Contest.
Join with others across the continent in this weekend science project. Your data will show trends in winter bird populations across North America as you can see in these statistics from prior years.
Don’t want to stay indoors? You can count birds anywhere or join others at one of these local events. (Scroll down for the many events in Pennsylvania.) Here’s how to participate no matter where you choose to count.
Meanwhile, you can practice counting with this photo by Marcy Cunkelman. What species and how many birds are in the picture?
(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)
Back in July I mentioned that there’s oak wilt in Schenley Park. In the weeks ahead those trees will come down.
Councilman Corey O’Connor is holding an informational meeting about the project on Monday February 3, 6:00pm – 7:30pm at the Jewish Community Center, Levinson Hall B. (The main entrance is at 5738 Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill.)
See Councilman O’Connor’s flyer below for more information.
One week from today on January 30 at 7:30pm, WQED’s Pittsburgh 360 will air a segment on winter birds by Doug Oster.
Several Pittsburgh birders are in the show including Bob Mulvihill of the National Aviary, Jim Hausman of Jefferson Hills and yours truly, Kate St. John.
If you miss the premiere next Thursday click here for dates and times of five opportunities to watch on TV plus a link to the online video, available after the show airs next Thursday.
See me in my purple coat. 
(photo by Andy Starnes/Post-Gazette)
Are you curious about the snowy owls visiting us this winter? Would you like to know who the owls are and where they’re going? So would a team of scientists. They’re going to find out and you can help.
This winter’s snowy owl irruption is so huge that by December ornithologists and wildlife managers realized they had a golden opportunity to find the answers to many questions: How old are the owls? What sex are they? Have they been exposed to toxins? Where are they going?
Thus was born Project SNOWstorm, a collaboration of 18 scientists and 13 organizations. The project tags snowy owls, collects data on their age, sex, and blood toxins (if any), and maps their movements via satellite. The project also collects location-specific photos of snowy owls from anyone who wants to help.
So far Project SNOWstorm has tagged two owls, one at Buena Vista, Wisconsin, the other at Assateague, Maryland. As soon as each owl was released his tag began transmitting at regular intervals. Their location data is continuously collected, then mapped to make a picture of the owls’ movements.
With only two tagged owls we can already see two different approaches. “Buena Vista” never moves far from his favorite winter territory (click here for his late December map). “Assateague,” on the other hand, loves to wander and has visited three states in only two weeks! (Click here for Assateague’s map).
You can help Project SNOWstorm in two ways. If you take pictures of snowy owls this winter, you can submit them to the project to add to their database.
Better yet, help buy more transmitters and tag more owls by making a tax deductible contribution to Project SNOWstorm via the Indiegogo website.
Click here to see a video about Project SNOWstorm and contribute via Indiegogo.
(photo by Kim Steininger)
1 January 2014
Have you ever heard your own words and learned something new from them?
I’d forgotten about an interview I did five+ years ago (in 2008) on The Allegheny Front until I stumbled upon it last week while writing about the Lower Buffalo Christmas Bird Count.
In the four and a half minute interview I found some useful resolutions for the New Year:
“Go outdoors, look around, look up. [Outdoors you’ll] get a view of things that are bigger than yourself. … I find it very calming to see that life goes on despite whatever is going on in my head. Nature is still rolling.”
Click on the photo above or hear to listen.
(photo by Chuck Tague, audio by The Allegheny Front)
On this, the last day of 2013, I’m sending a big thank you to the photographers who allow me to use their photos on my blog.
You’ve seen my own photographs in this space but none of them match the work of others, especially the six who contributed the most this year. From left to right, starting at top:
These folks are only the tip of the iceberg. So many photographers have contributed their work that there’s not room to list them all. (See the Photographers page!) I also owe a debt of gratitude to those who publish their work using the Creative Commons license for all to share.
So here’s a BIG THANK YOU to all the photographers who’ve given me permission to use their work. This blog would not be possible without you.
(composite photo from each of the photographers’ websites or Facebook pages)
p.s. I didn’t tell the photographers in advance that I needed their portraits so I had to glean photos from their websites or Facebook. After publication, Marcy Cunkelman sent this photo of herself.
28 December 2013
Today there are two local Christmas Bird Counts: Pittsburgh and the proposed circle at Imperial.
I want to count in both circles — especially since the Imperial CBC may find a snowy owl near the airport — but I’ve opted for Pittsburgh’s because I’ve counted on the same route in my neighborhood for 13 years. I would hate to miss the history of it.
Back on December 15 the Allegheny Front radio show covered the Lower Buffalo Christmas Bird Count in Washington County Pennsylvania, organized every year by Larry Helgerman. Click here for the news from Lower Buffalo’s count on The Allegheny Front: Audubon Christmas Bird Count Tradition Continues. Congratulations, Larry!
(birders at Burgh Castle, Norfolk, UK. photo by Glenn Scott, Creative Commons license on Flickr)
p.s. If you get an out-of-synch double-audio effect at the Lower Buffalo link above, click the pause button on one of the two audio feeds. The two feeds start automatically and are sometimes out of synch.
27 December 2013
Thanks to Pix Controller and the PA Game Commission the first bald eagle nestcam in Pennsylvania is right here in Pittsburgh!
Installed one week ago (20 Dec 2013) it’s already capturing the activities of the Hays bald eagle pair at their nest above the Monongahela River.
As you can see, installing the camera involved some scary tree climbing by Derek Spitler of the PA Game Commission. (The nest is in the tree to his right.) Mary Ann Thomas reported on the installation at TribLive. Click here to see close-ups and video of the installation.
Pittsburgh’s eaglecam has already captured the pair at their nest. The video at top was taken on Christmas Day 2013 and there are videos of the pair together on 23 December and one eagle in snow on 26 December 2013.
Though the site is within the city limits it is quite remote. There is no electricity and no Internet connection so the camera runs on solar power and transmits using the cell network. Right now Bill Powers of PixController is working out the kinks of too little battery power to run all night and thin data bandwidth from Sprint. All of it must be fixed within the next two weeks before access to the site is cut off to protect the eagles while they court and nest.
Bald eagles abandon nest sites with too much human disturbance so the area is posted, has video surveillance, and intruders are fined $1,000 to $10,000 by the PA Game Commission. Don’t even dream of going there.
Trib Total Media will stream the live feed on its website beginning in February 2014. Meanwhile you can see new video clips and watch the eagles online at PixController’s eaglecam site. If the camera is not streaming, rest assured that they’re working on it.
NOTE: seven years later in December 2020. The Hays Eaglecam is hosted here by the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania.
(Pittsburgh bald eagle nestcam video by PixController. Screenshot of camera installation from TribLive.)
p.s. While you wait for activity in Pittsburgh, watch eagle chicks on camera in Ft. Myers, Florida on the Southwest Florida Eaglecam.
The colors of a Merry Christmas…
Pyracantha after a rare snowfall in Nags Head, North Carolina, February 2006 by Bob Muller.
(photo by Bob Muller (bobxnc), Creative Commons license via Flickr)