Central stem of a white pine cone missing all its seed scales, bracts & seeds, Moraine State Park, 24 March 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
27 March 2022
On a walk last week in Moraine State Park we found a pile of pine cones in various stages of undress. Some were uneaten, some were half eaten and many were stripped bare like the stem above.
White pine cones at the red squirrel’s midden: uneaten to completely gone
We can know this because of the focus on pine cones, how the cones were denuded, and the sizeable midden. Conifer seeds make up the majority of the red squirrel’s diet and he defends his midden territory year-round against every other red squirrel.
Red squirrels are highly territorial and asocial with very few non-reproductive physical interactions. The majority of physical interactions are in male-female matings and between females and their offspring before the offspring disperse to their own territories. The non-reproductive physical interactions recorded (0.6% of all recorded behaviors in one 19-year study) were all instances of chasing an intruder from a territory.
Today is Candlemas, Groundhog Day, and the astronomical halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. This halfway point, called a cross-quarter day, is the reason the holidays exist.
In the astronomical year there are four halfway points between the solstices and equinoxes (green arrowheads in diagram; click on diagram for larger version).
February’s cross-quarter day is especially significant because we are coming out of darkness into longer daylight and the growing season. Our ancestors were so excited by the prospect that they created holidays on 2 February to celebrate the halfway point.
For the ancient Celts this day is Imbolc, the beginning of the spring.
And in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania it’s Groundhog Day. If the groundhog “Punxsutawney Phil” sees his shadow today (because the sun is shining) winter will go on for six more weeks. If he doesn’t (because it’s overcast) then we’re in for an early spring.
I’ve often noticed that in winter there are more birds in the city than the countryside. Though we may not have “quality” birds we make up for it in quantity with large numbers of fruit-eating birds drawn to our ornamental trees.
In the past two weeks hundreds of American robins have been feasting in Oakland. Some of the fruits were inedible until the deep freeze softened them so the robins circled back to finish the Bradford pears last weekend. This week they started on pyracantha berries and the red fruits of this (hawthorn?) tree next to the Cathedral of Learning.
Was half the fruit wasted when birds and squirrels knocked it out of the trees?
Look closely and you can see that deer walked among the fallen fruit. They must have crossed Forbes or Fifth Avenue after dark to browse on the Cathedral of Learning lawn.
Nearby, the sweetgum balls were coated in snow on Monday, all melted by Wednesday.
American goldfinches arrived to pull seeds out of the balls. Some fell on the snow.
You may remember this news on 23 December 2021: “Three days before Christmas a 260 pound black bear was trapped behind Boy Scout Headquarters in Downtown Pittsburgh where he’d been living for more than two weeks on a wooded hillside.”
How did a black bear end up in a city that’s nearly surrounded by rivers? Did he walk through the East End neighborhoods?
The clue comes from the bear’s first sighting in the Strip District, a neighborhood built on the Allegheny River floodplain. He probably came from the north and swam across the Allegheny.
Since black bears operate at night to avoid us, we rarely see them swim but they can take to water like ducks when they want to travel or beat the heat. Here’s a black bear swimming in Canada.
During the heat of August 2015 a family of six bears splashed in a backyard pool in New Jersey.
The bears had fun but couldn’t help breaking things.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons, videos embedded from YouTube; click on the captions/videos to see the originals)
Allegheny National Forest at Beaver Meadows Recreation Area, 12 Jan 2022 (photo by Barb Griffith)
15 January 2022
The sun was shining and the temperature was in the mid 30s when six of us arrived at Beaver Meadows Recreation Area in the Allegheny National Forest on 12 Jan 2022. We were there to find 40 red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) reported on 29 December. Just one perched in profile would be enough for me. I had to see the beak.
This one dragged his tail as he bounded across the path, planting his back feet in the prints of his front feet as he hurried from one subnivean hole to the next.
Likely the footprints of a white-footed mouse, Beaver Meadows, 12 Jan 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Since meadow voles have relatively short tails my guess is that the print was made by a white-footed mouse, (Peromyscus leucopus) pictured below. Notice the long tail.
Otters slid on lake ice near their den. A local man helped us with this ID and showed us a photo of the otters.
Red squirrels made small highways between trees.
Bobcat,
Snowshoe hare.
This was my first ever look at snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) tracks but I recognized the distinctive large hind feet that spread like “snowshoes” to help them walk on snow. (An optical illusion may make the footprints appear to bulge. My boot is at bottom of the photo for scale.)
Snowshoe hare track + tip of my boot, Beaver Meadow Recreation Area, Allegheny National Forest, 12 Jan 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Here are two sets of snowshoe hare prints, plain and marked up with notes. In the smaller track the hind feet are just less than 4″ long. In the larger the hind feet are about 6″ long.
Tracks of two snowshoe hares, Beaver Meadow Recreation Area, Allegheny National Forest, 12 Jan 2022 (photos by Kate St. John) Tracks of two snowshoe hares, Beaver Meadow Recreation Area, Allegheny National Forest, 12 Jan 2022 (photos and markup by Kate St. John)
And here’s the mammal that makes these prints. Snowshoe hares are active at night, dusk and dawn so of course we didn’t see any.
Ultimately we saw 10 species of birds, only 26 individuals, five of which were red crossbills. It was worth the trip for the snowshoe hares. Yes I did see a crossbill beak.
Three days before Christmas a 260 pound black bear was trapped behind Boy Scout Headquarters in Downtown Pittsburgh where he’d been living for more than two weeks on a wooded hillside. He would have gone unnoticed except for the huge mess he left at the dumpsters every night.
The Energy Innovation Center, next door to the Boy Scouts, set up a surveillance camera and caught him in the act.
Hands up! Stop raiding the dumpsters!
Game Warden Doug Berman of the PA Game Commission brought over the bear trap and the rest is history. Find out more in Mary Ann Thomas’ story at Trib Live: Black bear trapped in Downtown Pittsburgh Wednesday Morning and see her video tweets embedded below.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission trapped a 200-pound bear next to a dumpster in the Energy Innovation Center’s parking lot along Bedford Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh Wednesday morning. pic.twitter.com/TRLSpiZyDR
Douglas Bergman, a game warden with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, explains how a black bear was living for several weeks In the City of Pittsburgh in December of 2021. pic.twitter.com/sKvdm8LmaA
After four months on the loose the wild zebras of Maryland are back on the farm from which they escaped in August. News of their return was announced on Tuesday 14 December 2021.
Spokesmen for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Prince George’s County Department of the Environment confirmed that the zebras have been captured, but they could not provide details on when the recovery took place.
Neither the USDA nor Prince George’s County Animal Services were involved in the capture. They said they were notified Monday that the zebras had been recovered and returned to their herd last week.
p.s. On a happier note click here for a video about three well cared for zebras in Cecil County, Maryland including advice from their owner. (The Cecil County zebras live on the other side of Chesapeake Bay from the “wild zebras of Maryland.”)
(zebra photo from Wikimedia Commons, WUSA9 screenshot from YouTube video; click on the captions to see the originals)
GG looks up from a meal (photo by Chad+Chris Saldin)
30 November 2021
We humans assume that what we see is what everyone else sees, including other species. But this isn’t so.
Peregrines see much finer details at a greater distance that we do. The details don’t blur for them in a 200 mph dive. (Click the link to learn more.)
Tellus in a stoop (photo by Chad+Chris Saldin)
Cats cannot see red-green nor distant details, but they see much better in the dark. Who needs distance vision while looking for a nearby mouse at night? Click here to see photos of our vision versus cats’. Notice the normal vs. red-green-color-blind examples below.
White-tailed deer see regular blaze orange as gray but if the orange has fluorescence it stands out for them. Their vision is best in the blue range so that they see well in twilight.
The honey possum (Tarsipes rostratus), is a tiny species of marsupial that feeds on the nectar and pollen of a diverse range of flowering plants in southwest Australia.
Who is the other cute possum mentioned in the tweet above?
The little pygmy-possum (Cercartetus lepidus) is the world’s smallest possum, as small as a mouse and considered a threatened species in South Australia.
Why do zebras have stripes? There are many theories.
Are zebra stripes for camouflage from predators?
No. A 2016 study by Univ of Calgary and UC Davis examined the visual acuity of the zebras’ top predators, including lions and hyenas, and compared it to what zebras and humans can see.
Predators of zebras: spotted hyena and lion (photos from Wikimedia Commons)
The study found that beyond 50 meters (about 164 feet) in daylight or 30 meters (about 98 feet) at twilight, when most predators hunt, stripes can be seen by humans but are hard for zebra predators to distinguish. And on moonless nights, the stripes are particularly difficult for all species to distinguish beyond 9 meters (about 29 feet.) This suggests that the stripes don’t provide camouflage.
Wikipedia explains that a new zebra mother imprints her own striping pattern, scent and vocalization on her foal so the youngster will recognize and follow her.
The zebra stripes seemed to dazzle the flies so much that they couldn’t manage a controlled landing. Flies zoomed in too fast and either veered off just in time — or simply bumped into the zebra and bounced off. The flies didn’t seem to like the zebra coats on horses, either, but their bare heads were fair game.
