Category Archives: Books & Events

Bird Count News

Books & Events
Birders at Burgh Castle (photo by Glen Scott, Creative Commons license via Flickr)

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.

Pittsburgh Has PA’s First Eaglecam!

Birds of Prey, Books & Events

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.

Derek Spitler of the PA Game Commission mounts a remotely operated surveillance camera next to an eagle’s nest on a steep hillside overlooking the Monongahela River in the Hays section of Pittsburgh (photo by Hal Korber, Pennsylvania Game Commission)

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.

Norwegian Gifts

Books & Events, Trees
Norway spruces (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

When you see a tall evergreen with drooping branches in eastern North America, chances are it’s a Norway spruce.

Native to Europe, Picea abies is cultivated widely for landscaping and is now naturalized from Connecticut to Michigan.  Elsewhere the trees must be planted but they do quite well, tolerating more heat and humidity than other conifers.

Norway spruces are easy to identify because their drooping branches resemble the fringed sleeves on a cowboy jacket and their cones are long and thin with papery scales.

Norway spruce cones (photo by Randi Hausken, Creative Commons license on Flickr)

In Germany this species became the first Christmas tree.  In fact, it’s the tree that adorns New York’s Rockefeller Center, London’s Trafalgar Square, Edinburgh’s town square and Washington DC’s Union Square right now.

Every year since 1947 the City of Oslo has given a Norway spruce as a Christmas tree to those four cities in gratitude for U.S. and U.K. help during World War II.

Here’s Rockefeller Center’s tree on the 40th anniversary, Christmas Eve 1987.

Christmas tree,Rockefeller Center, 1987, gift of Oslo, Norway (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Click on the city names above to read about these beautiful Norwegian gifts.

(photos of spruce and Christmas tree from Wikimedia Commons. photo of cones by Randi Hausken, Creative Commons license on Flickr. Click on the images to see their originals)

Deck The Halls

Books & Events, Plants & Fungi

Bromeliad Christmas wreath at Phipps Conservatory (photo by Dianne Machesney)

Though Christmas wreaths are a northern tradition this one at Phipps Conservatory is made of bromeliads from the American tropics.

After the weather turns cold tomorrow you might be wishing you were somewhere warm.  If you’re in Pittsburgh you can warm up at the Winter Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory.  They’re all decked out for the holidays through January 12.

I love to bask in the humid warmth with tropical plants when its cold outside.  I can almost believe I’m on vacation.

 

(bromeliad Christmas wreath at Phipps Conservatory. photo by Dianne Machesney)

Winter Solstice

Books & Events, Weather & Sky
Sunset over the Susquehanna at Wrightsville, PA (photo by John Beatty)

21 December 2013

Today at 12:11pm the sun will stand still.

We call this the “winter” solstice but it’s more accurate to call it the southern solstice because the sun is going to stand still over the southern hemisphere.  The word “solstice” describes the event:  sol means sun and stice, from sistere, means to stand still.

You might be jealous of the southern hemisphere right now because they’re in the midst of summer but take heart in this: their spring and summer are shorter than ours.

That’s because the Earth doesn’t move at a constant speed in its elliptical orbit.  It takes the Earth 92.8 days to travel from the point of our vernal equinox to the location of the northern/summer solstice (March to June), 93.6 days from the summer solstice to the autumnal equinox (June to September), 89.8 days from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice (September to December) and 89.0 days from winter solstice to vernal equinox (December to March).  Thus the seasons aren’t equal in length.

This means that in the northern hemisphere spring and summer together are 7.6 days longer than those seasons in the southern hemisphere.  We have a week’s more warmth than they do.

If this is confusing, check out the earth map and explanation at this link at timeanddate.com whose information I paraphrased above.

(photo of the sun setting over the Susquehanna at Wrightsville, PA by John Beatty)

Happy Birthday, Surtsey (Belated)

Books & Events, Water and Shore

Island of Surtsey, 1999 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Fifty years and fifteen days ago, the island of Surtsey emerged from the sea off the southern coast of Iceland.

On November 14, 1963 the cook on the trawler Ísleifur II saw smoke on the water.  The captain motored over to see if it was a ship on fire or a volcano (in Iceland you know to include “volcano” on your list) and yes, it was a volcano.

From a spot of smoke it grew quickly into an island.  Here it is erupting in 1963.

Island of Surtsey erupting (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Named for a Norse fire giant, Surtsey continued to erupt for the next three and a half years until it grew even larger than it is today.  The island is literally losing ground.  It was 1 square mile at its maximum; now it’s only half.   The ocean immediately took away the loose rocks leaving behind hard volcanic cliffs.  They will eventually erode as well, it’ll just take longer.

For now Surtsey has settled down to a bland, quiet existence as a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the most studied places on earth.  What began as barren hot rock now hosts at least 69 plant species and 15 species of nesting birds (nice cliffs!).  Even spiders have drifted in and set up housekeeping.

Two unexpected plants arrived with human visitors and had to be eradicated lest they became invasive.  A tomato plant grew from a seed deposited by diarrhea (yes, it happens) and some boys planted potatoes.  Wrong!  Those had to go.

Right now Surtsey is probably under snow as in this photo from January 2009.
Surtsey Island, Jan 2009 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Very quiet, but she has an amazing history.  See great photos of her fiery birth and read more of her history, including the bizarre French territorial dispute, at the VolcanoCafé blog.

 

(photos of Surtsey from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the original)

Two Free Bird Events Next Week

Books & Events

Here are two free bird events coming up next week in Pittsburgh.

Guam rail at the National Aviary (photo from Wikimedia Commons)Monday November 18, 4:30pm, Guam Rail Reintroduction Presentation at the National Aviary

Laura Barnhart Duenas, manager of the Guam Rail and Micronesian Kingfisher captive breeding program at Guam’s Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources, will present a lecture on the successful bird conservation work she’s doing to reintroduce the Guam rail and other birds wiped out by the invasive brown tree snake.

The flightless Guam rail became extinct in the wild in the late 1980’s but has been bred in captivity and returned to small snake-free islands in the Mariana archipelago (Guam’s island zone).  The National Aviary has bred Guam rails since 1984, hatched 57 chicks and returned 23 of them to Guam.

Doors open at 4:00 p.m. Click here for more information. Click here for directions.

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Flamingo folio print by John James Audubon (courtesy University of Pittsburgh)

Friday, November 22, 9:00am to 4:45pm, Annual Audubon Day at the University of Pittsburgh

Next Friday the University of Pittsburgh will host their annual Audubon Day at Hillman Library.  More than two dozen original John James Audubon prints will be on display in the Special Collections Reading Room, Room 363.

In addition, from 10:00am to noon, Joel Oppenheimer, one of the world’s foremost Audubon experts, will deliver a presentation titled “Audubon’s Art and the Published Editions from the Nineteenth Century to the Present” in the Amy Knapp Room on Hillman’s ground floor.

For more information including the day’s agenda, click here.

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(photo of Guam rail at the National Aviary from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original. Flamingo print by John James Audubon, courtesy of University of Pittsburgh)

Positive Parroting

Bird Behavior, Books & Events

African Grey Parrot (photo courtesy Joe Brunette/©2013 THIRTEEN Productions LLC))

If you watched Parrot Confidential on PBS NATURE last night you know that people fall in love with parrots’ charm and beauty but often adopt them with almost no information on their needs.

Unfortunately there aren’t many ways to learn about parrots except by trial and error.  This can lead to huge frustration and the birds’ surrender to an uncertain future.

If you already own a parrot or are contemplating a purchase or rescue, where can you turn?

Parrot Confidential’s website provides a list of conservation, sanctuary and advocacy resources across the U.S.   Even better, if you live in Pittsburgh you can get a hands-on education at the National Aviary’s Positive Parroting classes.

Twice a year Dr. Pilar Fish (head avian veterinarian) and Cathy Schlott (manager of bird training) conduct three two-hour classes that provide practical resources and information to lower frustration and keep the bird united with the owner.

I spoke with Dr. Pilar Fish about the classes.  She’s a life-long parrot owner, former rescuer and parrot advocate.  In fact she became a bird veterinarian because of her love for parrots. She can tell you that owning a parrot is a totally absorbing hobby, a lifelong relationship and a lifestyle-changing commitment.  As she says, “I’ve been there. I want to be a resource.”

Most people don’t realize that parrots are advanced, complex animals.  They have the intelligence and problem-solving skills of toddlers (African Greys are like 6-year-olds!) but the emotional maturity of a 2-year-old.  Imagine a child in its “terrible twos” confined to a small space with a single toy and the same food day after day.  Of course he’ll have tantrums!

In class you’ll learn how to adjust for the bird’s natural behavior.  What do these birds do all day in the wild?  If you provide your parrot with his natural routine and toys to occupy his mind he’ll be much happier.  So will you.  In class you’ll get a “cookbook” of habitats, schedules and tips and you’ll make toys to occupy your parrot and enrich his life.

The second part of Positive Parroting is about problem solving.  Cathy Schlott teaches how to train your bird in a positive way, reward good behavior and deal with behavioral issues.  She gives live demonstrations using the Aviary’s own parrots, some of whom are former pets.

Fall classes have already begun.  The first class, The Healthy Happy Parrot, was held on October 26.  Still to come are:

  • Pet Bird Enrichment, this Saturday November 16, 2013, 10:00 am—12:00 pm. (enhance natural behaviors)
  • Training Your Pet Bird, Saturday December 7, 2013, 10:00 am—12:00 pm (problem solving)

Click on this link for information on Positive Parroting.  Education is good!

 

p.s.  If you haven’t seen Parrot Confidential yet, watch WQED’s rebroadcast at 5:00am tomorrow, Friday November 15.  The online broadcast is available at Parrot Confidential’s website.

 

(photo of African Grey Parrot courtesy Joe Brunette/©2013 THIRTEEN Productions LLC)