Category Archives: Musings & News

What Happens At A Clearcut?

November 6, 2015Bird Behavior, Mammals, Musings & News, TreesKate St. John

Tree removal project at Central Catholic, 30 Oct 2015 (photo by Kate St. John)

Before I retired from WQED in September 2014, this was the view outside my window … except there were trees.

Last month contractors removed all the trees on the hillside between CMU’s new Tepper Quad and Central Catholic’s football field. By the time I saw it a week ago it looked like this.

Hillside denuded by tree removal project at Central Catholic, 30 Oct 2015 (photo by Kate St. John)

To give you an idea of what it used to look like, here’s a view of the remaining trees behind WQED.

Trees remaining on hillside behind WQED, 30 Oct 2015 (photo by Kate St. John)

In the grand scheme of things this was a small woodlot surrounded by parking lots and an astroturf field, host to many invasive species.

Does it matter that humans removed this small landscape?

It does to the animals who lived there.

In the remaining woodlot behind WQED two squirrels fought a territorial battle. The loud one said, “This is mine! You have to leave!” The other cowered but stayed nearby. Probably a refugee.

Winter or a predator will determine who survives.

(photos by Kate St. John)

p.s. Does anyone know whose project this is (CMU or Central Catholic?) and why it was done?

UPDATE: I haven’t been back to the site for a week but friends confirm that this is a CMU project and that all the trees are gone now. Every single one.

Food For The Extinct

October 6, 2015Mammals, Musings & News, TreesKate St. John

The "monkey ball" fruit of the Osage Orange tree (photo from Architect of the Capitol via Wikimedia Commons) — The “monkey ball” fruit of the Osage Orange tree (photo from Architect of the Capitol via Wikimedia Commons)

6 October 2015

Why is the Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) “monkey ball” such a prolific fruit when almost nothing eats it?

Why is the avocado seed so large? (Persea americana)

Open avocado showing huge seed (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Why does the honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) have huge thorns on its trunk? …

Honeylocust thorns (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

… and large seed pods that no one eats?

Honey locust seed pod (photo from Wikimedia Commons) — Honey locust seed pod (photo by Andrew Dunn from Wikimedia Commons)

These plants were food for giants that are now extinct.

Just 13,000 years ago the Americas were inhabited by mammoths, horses and giant ground sloths whose diet included “monkey balls,” avocados and honey locust pods. Only a giant could eat such large fruit in one gulp and pass the seeds through its digestive track.

The giant ground sloth (Megatherium) for instance weighed 4 tons (8,000 pounds) and could reach 20 feet high when he put his paw on a tree trunk and stood on his hind legs. He could also damage the trees so the honey locust evolved big thorns for protection.

Megatherium, extinct ground sloth (illustration from Wikimedia Commons)

He’s been extinct for 10,000 years, but the tree remembers.

For a fun 5-minute video about the fruits that point to missing mammals, watch below.

video embedded from Ghosts of Evolution on YouTube

Notes and links:

Horses were extinct in North America until the Spaniards imported them. Modern horses eat monkey balls.
Why the Avocado Should Have Gone the Way of the Dodo (from Smithsonian Magazine)
Trees That Miss The Mammoths (from americanforests.org)
Slothful trends in evolution; from walking giants to tiny tree-dwellers.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on each image to see its original)

A Bird In Hand

October 2, 2015Musings & NewsKate St. John

Jonathan Nadle with bird in hand at Bird In Hand, PA (photo by Lori Nadle) — Jonathan Nadle with bird in hand (photo by Lori Nadle)

My Tuesday article about hand feeding chickadees (A Bird On The Hand) prompted my friend Jonathan Nadle to send me this photo.

He said it was difficult to find the bird at this location but he was determined not to miss the chance to hold this exceptional species.

(photo by L&J Nadle)

p.s. The man who invented the pink plastic flamingo died last June. Did you know that for 37 years he and his wife always wore matching outfits? Click here to read more.

Pay Attention To What I Eat

September 30, 2015Musings & News, SongbirdsKate St. John

Yellowhammer, male (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s the story of a great idea that went sour really fast because people didn’t observe bird behavior.

During the 1800’s many Britons emigrated to New Zealand and began farming. As the settlers cleared the forest, New Zealand’s native birds (which are flightless) retreated or became extinct.

Soon insect pests proliferated and the farmers clamored for a solution. Someone had a bright idea, “I know! Birds eat bugs. Let’s import a bird.”

The Acclimatisation Societies decided to import the yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella), a sparrow-like Eurasian bird famous for his pretty song. They lined up dealers in Britain who captured local yellowhammers and shipped them overseas. New Zealand’s farmers welcomed them with open arms.

It didn’t take long to find out this was a terrible mistake. The birds ate the crops, not the insects.

Look at his conical bill and you can tell the yellowhammer eats seeds all year long. In fact, he only supplements his diet with insects during the breeding season.

Soon New Zealanders hated the yellowhammers. In 1880, only 15 years after the first birds arrived, the last shipment was turned away and sent to Australia. Farmers hunted, poisoned and raided yellowhammer nests, trying to rid the country of this once welcomed bird but it was too late. Yellowhammers were firmly established in New Zealand and are widespread today.

They’d have saved a lot of trouble if someone had paid attention to what yellowhammers eat.

Read the full story here at Science Daily.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

In Case You Missed It: Tick Check!

September 28, 2015Climate Change, Insects, Musings & NewsKate St. John

Lyme Disease incidence in U.S. 2014 (map from CDC.gov)

Undrinkable in Pennsylvania

September 22, 2015Musings & News, Water and ShoreKate St. John

Undrinkable: acid mine drainage (photo by Kate St. John) — Acid mine drainage in well water (photo by Kate St. John)

Two weeks in Maine where the water is clean re-opened my eyes to something I take for granted in Pennsylvania: polluted orange water.

Perhaps you’ve been to this restroom at the Route 528 boat launch in Moraine State Park. The restroom is clean but the water is not. “Notice. Non-potable water. Not for Drinking.” The metallic smell and orange-stained sinks and toilets make you wonder, “If the water’s that bad, should I use it to wash my hands?”

Coal mining contaminated the ground water here(*). The orange water is acid mine drainage. When the coal was removed it exposed pyrite which, when exposed to water, turns into sulfuric acid and iron. Bad water from old surface and underground mines flows into streams and wells in Pennsylvania’s coal regions.

95% of the abandoned mine drainage in the U.S. is right in here in western PA, West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, and far western Maryland. Visitors are shocked by the orange water we’ve come to take for granted. Pennsylvania has more than 3,000 miles of these polluted streams, a problem too huge for individuals to solve.

The good news is that Pennsylvania stepped in with coal mining laws in the 1960’s that prevent new water contamination and PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) can require clean up when an old mine is reopened. Slowly, the worst water is being treated and improved.

That’s how part of the Conemaugh River turned from orange to clear in Somerset County in 2013. See before and after pictures and read about the impressive change here on the Allegheny Front.

(photo by Kate St. John)

(*) There are other ways to expose pyrite. During construction of Interstate-99, excavation and rock-handling on Bald Eagle Ridge exposed pyrite that polluted nearby ground water and Buffalo Run, a high quality stream. Though the pyrite was known to be there, construction plans ignored it. It took two years and $83 million to fix the mistake.

Fossil at Ferncliff

July 15, 2015Musings & News, Plants & FungiKate St. John

15 July 2015

Years ago when I first hiked the Ferncliff Trail at Ohiopyle I was puzzled by this pattern on the rock beneath my feet.

In those days there were no interpretive signs nearby so I tried to make sense of it as best I could. I decided it was a motorcycle track, but I couldn’t figure out how the vehicle had gotten there and why it had run from the cliff into the river.

Duh! Motorcycles don’t leave tracks in rock. It’s a fossil!

Fossil at Ferncliff Peninsula (photo by Kate St. John)

This Lepidodendron is one of six kinds of fossils found along the river’s edge now listed on an interpretive sign as: Cordaites leaves, Lepidodendron scale, giant Calamites, Psaronius, a giant dragonfly and Sigillaria.

Though I’ve seen the other ones this is the fossil I like the best.

Lepidodendron was a tree-like plant with scales on its trunk that grew as high as 100 feet tall.

Drawing of Lepidodendron by Eli Heimans, 1911 (image from Wikipedia) — Drawing of Lepidodendron by Eli Heimans, 1911 (image from Wikimedia Commons)

It lived and died in the Carboniferous (coal making) era. If the tree had fallen in a swamp it would have become peat and then coal, but it happened to fall on sand so the patterns of its scaly trunk were preserved in rock.

Not far away is one of Lepidodendron’s last living relatives: Lycopodium or groundpine. Only 6-12 inches tall, it provides a visual hint of its ancestor’s appearance including the scales on its trunk and branches.

Lycopodium (photo from Wikimedia Commons) — Tree Groundpine, Lycopodium dendroideum (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The past and present are near each other at Ferncliff Peninsula.

(fossil photos by Kate St. John. Drawing of Lepidodendron and photo of Lycopodium from Wikimedia Commons; click the images see the originals)

A Happy Merger

April 17, 2015Musings & NewsKate St. John

UPDATE ON 6 JULY 2017: When I wrote this article in 2015 I thought the merger was imminent but as of 6 July 2017 the American Ornithological Union has still not accepted it. I still need to see a hoary redpoll for my Life List.

UPDATE ON 21 JUNE 2019: I saw hoary redpolls on the Teller Hwy near Nome, Alaska. Life Bird!

In Cornell Lab of Ornithology‘s eNews I encountered the only case of species “lumping” I’ve ever been glad to see.

Researchers from Cornell Lab’s Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program tested the DNA of 77 hoary and common redpolls and found that hoary redpolls and common redpolls have no differences at all across much of their genomes. Just to make sure, Nicholas Mason and Scott Taylor examined 235,000 regions of the genome, not just 11, and they tested DNA of the lesser redpoll of Eurasia. The lesser redpoll is the same as well.

What we’ve been calling three species are merely variations in color and size. Other species vary, too. Humans, for instance.

Now that the weight of DNA evidence merges hoary, common and lesser redpolls into one species it’s only a matter of paperwork, review, and voting at the American Ornithologists’ Union to make this official.

I’ll be happy when its done. I’ve seen common redpolls but not hoary ones, and now I won’t have to go out of my way to find a hoary redpoll unless I’d like to see his beautiful pale feathers. This simplifies my winter travel plans considerably.

Read more here about the only redpoll in Cornell Lab’s All About Birds blog.

(photo of a (formerly) hoary redpoll at left and common redpoll at right by dfaulder via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

Aren’t All Rails Invisible?

April 13, 2015Musings & NewsKate St. John

The Invisible Rail on an Indonesian postage stamp (image from Wikimedia Commons) — *The Invisible Rail on Indonesian postage stamp (image from Wikimedia Commons)*

Most birds in the rail family (Rallidae) are extremely elusive. They make noise during the breeding season but, except for coots and gallinules, they hide while they’re doing it. Two of the rails on my Life List are birds I heard but didn’t see.

So when I visited Wikipedia‘s website on April Fools Day I thought they were joking by featuring an article on the Invisible rail. Really? Aren’t all rails invisible?

However the invisible rail is real. Also called Wallace’s or the drummer rail (Habroptila wallacii) it cannot fly and lives in only one place on Earth — the impenetrable, thorny, sago swamps on the Indonesian island of Halmahera. This quote from the Wikipedia article describes its habitat:

German ornithologist Gerd Heinrich, who prepared for his Halmahera trip by rolling in stinging nettles, wrote of the sago swamp habitat in the 1930s:

I am solidly confident no European has ever seen this rail alive, for that requires such a degree of toughening and such demands on oneself as I cannot so easily attribute to others. Habroptila is shielded by the awful thorns of the sago swamps… In this thorn wilderness, I walked barefoot and half-naked for weeks.

The invisible rail is so rarely seen that most of its online photos are of a single, recently dead bird. The easiest way to get close to one is to buy its Indonesian commemorative postage stamp for 2,500 rupiah or about 19 cents.

Despite its protective habitat the rail is listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature because it’s a flightless island species, its only habitat is being harvested and converted to farming, and the locals eat the rail if they can trap it.

No one’s sure how many invisible rails exist. If they go extinct they will be truly invisible.

(image of an Indonesian postage stamp featuring Habroptila wallacii, the Invisible Rail. Click on the image to see the original)

Today, Stonehenge At Home

March 20, 2015Musings & News, PhenologyKate St. John

Throw Back Thursday (TBT) is a day late in honor of the Spring Equinox.

During today’s sun event there will be a Stonehenge effect in my neighborhood.

Click on the link to learn how the position of our houses causes Stonehenge At Home.

(photo of Stonehenge in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

Outside My Window

A Blog of Birds & Nature with Kate St. John