Category Archives: Books & Events

My Life As A Turkey

Books & Events, Doves & Chickens


Next Wednesday on PBS Nature…

Back in the 1990’s biologist and wildlife artist Joe Hutto spent two years in the Florida Flatwoods as mother to a flock of wild turkeys.

It began when a neighboring farmer dropped off a clutch of 16 orphaned wild turkey eggs and Joe decided to imprint them.

When the eggs hatched Joe made sure the first pair of eyes they saw were his own.  The hatchlings immediately recognized him as their mother and thus began the strange and wonderful journey that became his 1998 book, Illumination in the Flatwoods.

My Life as a Turkey shows what happened, the joys of discovery and the sadness of death, as the peeps became poults and then adult birds.  Day after day, week after week, Joe’s bond with his turkeys grew stronger.  The more time he spent with them, the more he learned and the less detached he became.  He was their parent, they were his family.  He learned to live in the present as they did.  He often felt more turkey than human.

My Life As A Turkey is beautiful, moving, sad and fascinating.

“Had I known what was in store—the difficult nature of the study and the time I was about to invest—I would have been hard pressed to justify such an intense involvement. But, fortunately, I naively allowed myself to blunder into a two-year commitment that was at once exhausting, often overwhelming, enlightening, and one of the most inspiring and satisfying experiences of my life.”

–Joe Hutto, Illumination in the Flatwoods

Don’t miss My Life As A Turkey next Wednesday, November 16 on PBS Nature.  On WQED it’s at 8:00pm.

You will never look at a wild turkey the same way again.

(photo from My Life As A Turkey)

Bird-thday Blog

Books & Events

Surprise!

This morning 4 crows brought me 4 cupcakes to celebrate Outside My Window‘s 4th birthday.

They say it’s a thank you gift from the Winter Crow Flock for my enthusiastic love of birds.  I guess their elders have forgiven me for liking peregrines so much.

These four crows are juveniles (the pink around their bills is the hint) so they missed last year’s blog statistics and are insisting on an update.  To appease them, here are some numbers:

Numbers aside, I enjoy writing and am grateful to you, my readers, for your comments, suggestions and contributions.  A huge thank you goes to the many photographers who’ve contributed photos and videos to the site.  Without you I’d just be a pile of words.

So a big thank you and round of applause from me to you for 4 wonderful years together.

Ooops!  The crows are getting impatient.

“Blow out the candles!  We want to eat!”

(party crows by Joan Guerin)

p.s.  Do you have a favorite post?  A suggestion for new topics?  Leave a comment and let me know.

My Clocks Are Just Fine

Books & Events, Musings & News

I don’t want to change them but I’m supposed to turn my clocks back an hour tonight.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) was invented for people like me whose work is ruled by the clock but who spend their leisure time outdoors.  It’s really inconvenient for those who work by the solar day — farmers, for instance.

Though I like Daylight Saving Time I hate changing the clocks no matter which direction they’re going.

The twice yearly jog causes trouble for nationwide schedules, computer programs, and our sleep patterns.  We saw this when DST’s start and end dates moved by law in 2007.  Computers that missed the patch stayed on the old schedule.  Most annoying to me was the computer that unlocked the doors for the business day but remained on Standard time in early March.  It was too old to patch so we changed its time by hand.  Three weeks later it “knew” to change to DST and was wrong again.  Aaaaarrrggg!  (We got a new computer.)

Even worse are the clock-change effects on people.  In March the loss of an hour makes everyone groggy.  Studies have shown that there are significantly more workplace accidents on the Monday after we “spring forward.”  Not only that, everyone’s grumpy for days!  I am, too.

Most of the world doesn’t suffer through this.  DST wasn’t standardized in the U.S. until 1966 and it’s not observed in Asia, Russia, most of Africa and most of South America.  It’s not even observed in Arizona and Hawaii.

So why do we have Daylight Saving Time?

In a word:  Lobbyists.

DST had a few early champions (G.V.Hudson, William Willett, and Pittsburgh’s Robert Garland) but it didn’t really catch on until lobbyists urged its use.  The start and end dates moved in 2007 because the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores began lobbying for it in 2005.  Their sales benefit from outdoor leisure time.

We don’t have to live like this.  If I was in charge, we’d turn the clocks forward one night in March and we’d never go back.

I’m telling you, my clocks are just fine!

(photo in the public domain from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original.)

Jungle Eagle

Beyond Bounds, Birds of Prey, Books & Events


Coming next Wednesday on PBS Nature is a raptor story nest-watchers can relate to.

Jungle Eagle follows filmmaker Fergus Beeley as he monitors a harpy eagle nest in Venezuela’s Orinoco River valley.  Over a period of nine months he shows us the life of an eaglet and his family, from newly hatched chick to young adulthood.  The story is dramatic.  The lifestyle of these eagles makes it dangerous.

Harpy eagles live in the South American rainforest and are the largest eagle in the western hemisphere.  They dwell at the top of the canopy and eat monkeys and sloths from the trees. They kill by surprise.

The adults are top predators but the young are vulnerable.  When the chick is small his mother must guard him.  Even the monkeys that become his food could eat him.

Fergus Beeley shows this by filming from a tree stand and using a nestcam.  Peregrine nest watchers will see parallels between the harpy eagles and our favorite raptor:

  • The mother bird guards the chick and won’t leave him while he’s small.
  • She calls her mate to bring food.  “Come NOW!”
  • When he delivers a meal, she snatches it and barely says thank you.
  • Though a powerful raptor, she is very tender with her chick.
  • The baby grows into a fully feathered teenager who begs from his parents.

Inevitably there are nestcam problems, but they’re more dangerous to fix than anything we ever encounter.  Peregrines fiercely defend their nests and harpy eagles do, too.  But harpy eagles are huge and they’re skilled at killing primates.  And what are humans?  Large primates!

In the end the eaglet reaches adulthood and starts to hunt on his own.  As adults, harpy eagles are powerful, self sufficient birds.  The real danger they face is extinction because people cut down the rainforest these birds require for life.

Watch Jungle Eagle on PBS Nature on Wednesday, November 9 to see beautiful footage of our hemisphere’s most powerful bird.  On WQED the show is at 8:00pm EST.

(photo of a harpy eagle from PBS Nature)

Witchy Things

Books & Events, Plants & Fungi, Schenley Park
Witches hat mushroom (Hygrophorus conicus) (photo by Dave Powell, USDA Forest Service, from Bugwood.org)

31 October 2011

Happy Halloween!   Here’s a selection of witchy things to celebrate the day.

Witches hat mushroom (Hygrophorus conicus), shown above, is common in the forest at this time of year..

Witch-hazel trees are blooming now in Schenley Park.

Witch-hazel blooming in Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
Witch-hazel blooming (photo by Kate St. John)

The gelatinous fruiting body of Witches Butter fungus (Tremella mesenterica) feels greasy or slimy when damp.  Eeeewwwww!

Witches butter fungus (photo by Gerald Holmes, Valent USA Corporation, Bugwood.org)

Witches brooms in hackberry trees are ugly but don’t kill the tree.  They’re so common in hackberries that I use them as a clue to identify the tree in winter.

 (photo by Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org)

(photo credits embedded above)

For a Pittsburgh Bird Feeder

Books & Events

If you have a bird feeder and live in/near Pittsburgh….

WQED’s Chris Fennimore has 3 popcorn tins full of sunflower seeds that he wants to give to a good home.  If you can pick them up at WQED (4802 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, 15213), then they’re yours!

How to “win:”   Leave a comment below to tell me you want them.   First come, first served. 

If schedules mesh, you’ll get to meet Chris Fennimore when you pick them up.

//UPDATE:  BIRD SEED HAS BEEN CLAIMED. THAT’S ALL, FOLKS.  WE HAD A WINNER IN ONLY 6 MINUTES!

Flipped a Rock

Books & Events

Unnoticed among the 10th Anniversary commemorations of 9/11 is this:  Today is also International Rock Flipping Day (IRFD). 

Back in 2007  Dave Bonta and Bev Wigney started “Rock Flipping Day” as a blog carnival — a day in which to look for and blog about Nature in an unlikely place.  It immediately became an international event when bloggers from four continents posted their findings under rocks around the world.  Susannah Anderson (Wanderin’ Weeta) now organizes the event on the second Sunday of September.  In 2011 it happens to coincide with an important day in U.S. history.

I’ve participated in IRFD since 2009 so I decided to flip a rock despite today’s somber tone. 

My chosen rock is in our city backyard in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  It’s not actually a rock but a large concrete paving tile in the alley behind our back fence.  My husband helped by lifting one end while I snapped away with the camera.  You can see his feet as he holds up the slab.

 

What have we here? 

Tunnels and trash. 

The tunnels are easy to see.  Inside the tunnels are two bits of trash, positioned as if dragged there by the tunnel-maker. Only one is visible in the picture.  The square in the center of the photo that’s faintly yellow with a turquoise stripe is a piece of cellophane wrapper.

What lives in the city, makes tunnels, and pulls trash into them? 

A gray-colored rodent with a naked tail.  🙁

I didn’t expect to find this.  It’s creepy to think the tunnels were made by a rat right there behind my back fence, but what else could it be?  The slab is in the alley where everyone keeps their garbage cans.  

I have seen lots of wildlife in the City of Pittsburgh: hawks, owls, a bald eagle, groundhogs, raccoons, white-footed mice, deer, a red fox, even a toad. Just because I rarely see rats doesn’t mean they aren’t here.

Fortunately nothing moved under our rock and the tunnels don’t look recently used.  Perhaps our “visitor” moved on when I stopped feeding the birds in the spring to keep away rodents this summer. Or maybe an owl or a red-tailed hawk ate him.

I can only hope! 

Update: I did some research and I am very relieved! The tunnels are nowhere near large enough nor long enough to be rat tunnels. The tunnels under my rock are about 1″ in diameter and have straight-ways less than 6″ long. Rat tunnels are 3″ in diameter and 2 to 6 feet long. So the rock had a small rodent under it. Perhaps a mouse. I can cope with that!

(photo by Kate St. John)

p.s. Here’s the list of other bloggers who flipped a rock this year:
A Roving I will Go
Rebecca in the Woods
Fertanish Chatter
Bug Safari
Growing with Science Blog
Wild About Ants
Powell River Books Blog
Meandering Washington
Cicero Sings
Via Negativa
Mainly Mongoose
Chicken Spaghetti
Wanderin’ Weeta
Rock, Paper, Lizard. (The Interpreter)
_Cabin Girl
From Twitter: At Rattan Creek ff. From @gjesse on Twitter
From Flickr: Flickr group

Great Fun at SkyDeck!

Books & Events

Yesterday 37 bird blog and peregrine fans gathered at the National Aviary to see the sights, learn about birds and watch the Sky Deck show.   We had fun!

Steve Sarro, Director of Animal Programs, gave us a wonderful tour and taught us a lot about birds.

The favorite thing I learned is this:  Steve told us that African penguins add 50% to their weight just before they molt and then they lose all their feathers at once!  It takes several weeks to grow them back.  One of the Aviary’s African penguins, Elvis, is molting right now and he sure looks shaggy.  He’s in a good mood but he’s having a couple of “bad hair weeks.”

Up at Sky Deck, the weather was perfect for flying and the birds were awesome.  Amut, the lanner falcon, flew for the lure and used amazing “sneak attacks” by flying below the building’s edge, then popping up over Sky Deck to hit it.   Heather Jacoby got a nice photo of her on the glove, above. Here is Sharon’s video:

Much as we love falcons, everyone agreed that the black kites were the best.  All six of them flew above us snatching food out of the air.  At one point three of them went for the same airborne morsel and gracefully avoided a midair collision.  Click on Heather’s photo of the black kite (below) to see Sharon’s video of them flying.

 

We had a great time on our afternoon full of birds as you can see by our smiling faces.  Thanks to all of you for coming!    And thanks to Heather and Sharon for sending links to their photos.  If you have photos you’d like to share, leave a comment with your links below.

 

p.s. The Aviary is open all year, but Sky Deck is just a summertime show so visit now while the weather is perfect for flying.  For more information see the National Aviary website at www.aviary.org

(Lanner falcon and black kite photos by Heather Jacoby.  Group photo by Sharon Leadbitter.)

Avian Architecture

Books & Events


I’ve just finished reading a fascinating book about birds’ nests called Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer & Build (Princeton University Press, 2011) by Peter Goodfellow.

It’s not your typical bird-nest guide.  Instead the book groups nests by architectural type, shows blueprints of their construction, and provides case studies and photographs of species who construct each type. 

Did you know that…

  • Female hornbills seal themselves into their cavity nests and must rely on their mates to feed them through a narrow slit until the chicks are ready to fledge.
  • African Jacanas build nests that float.
  • Spider silk and moss work like Velcro.  The builder can stick them together, pull them apart and re-glue them elsewhere.  Hummingbirds are masters at this.
  • Some birds actually stitch their nests.  The common tailorbird (nest pictured above) wraps a large leaf with a thread to make it curl, then pokes its bill through the leaf edges and uses spider or cocoon silk to sew it in place.  When the curl is secure she builds her nest inside.
  • Megapodes build compost heaps and lay their eggs in them.  The heat of the decaying vegetable matter incubates the eggs.

If you’d like to learn about avian architecture this book is a great place to start.  The photographs and illustrations are gorgeous.  I learned something new on every page.  

Click here to find out more from Princeton University Press.

(photo of a Common Tailorbird nest by J.M. Garg at Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the photo to see the original.)

p.s.  Scott Shalaway recommended this book among his Wildlife Books for Summer Reading.

Let’s go to Sky Deck!

Books & Events, Peregrines


Bird blog and peregrine fans, let’s have a reunion!

Back in March at WQED’s peregrine event, we met a lanner falcon who was training for the National Aviary’s new Sky Deck flight show.  I promised then that we’d get together this summer to see him fly.  Now’s the time.  Let’s go to Sky Deck. 

I’ve arranged with Steve Sarro, the Aviary’s Director of Animal Programs, for a fun-filled afternoon in late August.  We’ll meet Steve at:
 The National Aviary, 700 Arch Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15212
 East Entrance on Arch Street, Concierge desk
 at 2:00 pm on Monday, August 22 (*).

He’ll give us a personal tour of the Aviary.  Then we’ll go up on the roof for the 3:30pm Sky Deck show.  It’s an open air theater where the raptors fly free.  We’ll be thrilled by acrobatic black kites, a powerful martial eagle, and the lanner falcons who remind us of peregrines.  Here’s a lanner on the lure (which resembles a bird) at Sky Deck in June.

The cost is:

  • Members of the National Aviary: $5 per person for Sky Deck
  • Non-members: $18 per person (includes $13 admission + $5 Sky Deck)
  • If our group has 15 or more non-members at the Concierge Desk that day, we’ll get a group rate of $9 per non-member.

Sky Deck seating is limited to 50 people so be sure to email me at peregrines@wqed.org if you plan to come.  We don’t want to turn anyone away at the door.  (NOTE:  All Sky Deck attendees must be at least 42” tall, no babies and no strollers.)

Hope you can make it!  I’m looking forward to seeing you.

For directions and information about the National Aviary, see their website at www.aviary.org

(photo by Chuck Tague)

p.s.  (*) Sky Deck performances require good weather.  If all day rain or severe afternoon weather is certain on August 22, we’ll go on Tuesday, August 23 instead.  Watch the blog for updates.