Sometimes soggy ground is too weak to hold a mature tree.
On Friday January 12 it rained 2 inches in 24 hours in Pittsburgh. Then it got very cold.
This red oak was rooted in a hillside in Panther Hollow but it began to lean after so much rain. By January 16 it blocked the Upper Trail in Schenley Park. The Park Ranger vehicle can’t come through.
Alas, it just fell over.
(photo by Kate St. John)
Nowadays I don’t have to go far to see white-tailed deer in southwestern Pennsylvania. The deer population in Schenley Park has grown by leaps and bounds since I first noticed them a decade ago.
When I don’t see the animals, I see their evidence. In July, they eat so much jewelweed that it looks like the trail edges were weed-whacked.
In winter they eat shrubs like this arborvitae on Schenley Golf Course until there’s no green near the ground.
And they eat small trees. More than a year ago they ate the leader shoot of this hackberry seedling. The next year two branches sprouted to compensate and the deer ate those. And on and on and on. The tree grows old but never tall.
These signs of deer damage indicate their over-population in Schenley Park but the scariest sign is the growing number of deer crossing the road.
Last week I saw an 8-point buck ambling across Greenfield Road while pedestrians stopped and stared. He was majestic and he was lucky. No cars were coming.
Last June a deer leapt over a guard rail in Indiana County and landed on the hood of Marcy Cunkelman’s car. She couldn’t see it coming and she couldn’t see to drive after it crumpled the hood. The deer didn’t survive the accident but Marcy and her family were fortunate. They were fine and the airbags didn’t deploy.
That happened in June when deer are less distracted than they are in autumn. This month there’s a much higher chance of hitting a deer because they’re on the move and they aren’t paying attention. It’s mating season.
Pennsylvania is the #3 state for vehicle-deer insurance claims. According to State Farm’s annual report, there were more than 142,000 vehicle-deer collisions in Pennsylvania from June 2016 to June 2017. On an annual basis we have a 1 in 63 chance of a hitting a deer but during mating season that likelihood more than doubles … to maybe 1 in 30. Yikes!
So stay alert! Watch out for deer, especially at dusk. Click here for State Farm’s tips on what to do. … And good luck.
p.s. Wear blaze orange if you’re going into Pennsylvania’s woods, especially during PA’s deer (rifle) season, Monday Nov 27 through Dec 9, 2017. Click here for PGC details on antlered/antlerless dates and locations.
(deer and plant photos by Kate St. John. Car damage photo by Marcy Cunkelman)
18 November 2017
Last Sunday in Schenley Park I found these small hard berries littering the trails … and then one fell on my head. I looked up to see a flock of robins knocking berries to the ground as they reached to eat them.
It’s easy to identify the berries by the bark of their tree. The common hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) has distinctive layered ridges.
Here’s a closeup of one ridge, photographed on a frosty morning.
Birds eat the berries. Deer eat the twigs.
Hackberry trees provide lots of food for wildlife.
(photos by Kate St.John)
Even though we saw only 21 species in Schenley Park this morning it was a better than average day with five warbler species. Of course they were all Best Birds.
We also witnessed some interesting woodpecker behavior. Five northern flickers perched near each other on a telephone pole and two of them challenged each other with “wikka wikka wikka.”
Click here for our eBird checklist or peruse the list below. Notice that we saw NO CROWS. That’ll change soon. 😉
Canada Goose
Mourning Dove
Chimney Swift
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Blue Jay
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
American Robin
Gray Catbird
European Starling
Nashville Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
American Redstart
Magnolia Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
Song Sparrow
House Finch
(photo by Kate St. John)
Let’s get outdoors!
Join me on a bird and nature walk in Schenley Park on Sunday September 24, 2017 — 8:30am – 10:30am.
Meet me at Schenley Park Cafe and Visitor Center where Panther Hollow Road meets Schenley Drive.
We’ll visit Phipps Run and Panther Hollow Lake, looking for fall flowers and migrating birds. I’m sure we’ll see goldenrod though I won’t know what species it is. (Goldenrods are hard to identify!) Perhaps we’ll see migrating monarch butterflies because the weather has been so warm.
Dress for the weather and wear comfortable walking shoes. Bring binoculars and field guides if you have them.
Before you come, visit the Events page in case there are changes or cancellations. The outing will be canceled if there’s lightning (unlikely this Sunday but you never know).
NOTE! The Great Race will run on Forbes and Fifth Avenue this Sunday. Approach Schenley Park from the Boulevard of the Allies and you’ll avoid the detours. Here’s the road closure list and timing.
27 August 2017
This morning’s outing at Schenley Park was great for birds!
Though we saw only 26 species, plus a silent Empidonax flycatcher, we had good looks at some birds we don’t see every day including wood thrushes and a young Baltimore oriole.
Best Bird was a male pileated woodpecker, the first bird of the day. 😉
Best Insect — the one that got me excited — were some tiny flatid planthoppers, gray with blueish spots. To my untrained eye they looked like this, Metcalfa pruinosa, an insect native to North America.
Click here for today’s eBird checklist, also listed below.
Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)
Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica)
Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)
Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus)
Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus)
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)
Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)
Eastern Wood-Pewee (Contopus virens)
Empidonax species (Empidonax sp.)
Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus)
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)
Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis)
Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor)
White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis)
Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina)
American Robin (Turdus migratorius)
Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis)
Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)
Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina)
Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus)
Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula)
Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula)
House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus)
American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis)
(group photo by Kate St. John. Insect photo from Wikimedia Commons via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)
Today’s the big day of the Solar Eclipse. Click here for where & when to watch.
After it’s over, what are we going to do for fun and excitement? Let’s go outdoors.
Join me on a bird and nature walk in Schenley Park next Sunday, August 27, 8:30am to 10:30am.
Meet at Bartlett Shelter on Bartlett Street near Panther Hollow Road. We’ll look in the meadow for flowers, birds and butterflies, then explore the woodland trails. I’m sure we’ll see honey bees, perhaps on wingstem flowers (Verbesina alternifolia) like this one.
Dress for the weather and wear comfortable walking shoes. Bring binoculars and field guides if you have them.
Before you come, visit the Events page in case there are changes or cancellations. The outing will be canceled if there’s lightning!
(photo by Kate St. John)
This morning 15 of us met at the Westinghouse Memorial pond for a walk along the Falloon Trail and Serpentine Road in Schenley Park.
For the most part birds were hard to find. Though we knew they were in the woods, they weren’t singing and the leaves were dense and dark. Ultimately we recorded 19 species. Complete checklist is here.
Best Birds:
Best mammal: Fox squirrel in a tree.
Best flower: Joe-pye weed, a perennial in the sunflower family.
Best tree: Northern catalpa or the Toby Tree (the Pittsburgh name for it). Though I grew up in Pittsburgh I had never heard the name. Kimberly Thomas Googled it and found Chuck Tague’s blog Tobies: The Cigar Tree.
Best butterfly: Three Monarchs and the very common Eastern Tailed Blue which Tom Moeller identified for us.
Question: Is the black oak in the red oak group or the white oak group.
Answer: The black oak is a red oak.
(photo by Kate St. John)
p.s. The bronze statue in the photo represents a young man looking up to George Westinghouse.
On Tuesday I heard a sound in Schenley Park that I didn’t recognize: a melodious call from a baby bird.
I found the bird flutter-climbing from a low perch to a high spot in a tree, moving fast and begging the entire time. He had downy tufts on his head, a striped chest, big feet, short wings and an almost non-existent tail. He looked a lot like the bird pictured above.
I couldn’t identify the fledgling so I waited for his mother to bring food and she solved the mystery. A bird just like her is pictured below (from Wikimedia Commons).
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If you don’t recognize her, here’s another clue. The father bird looks like this. (I didn’t see him that day.)
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Obviously scarlet tanagers change a lot as they grow into breeding adults. Read more about them in this vintage article from July 2008:
(photo of fledgling by Chuck Tague. photos of adult female and male from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals)
Join me on a bird and nature walk in Schenley Park next Sunday, July 30, 8:30am to 10:30am.
Meet at the Westinghouse Memorial pond and we’ll walk Serpentine Drive or the nearby Falloon Trail keeping our eyes open for birds, plants and animals. The memorial pond is especially pretty in July with pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata) in bloom.
Dress for the weather and wear comfortable walking shoes. Bring binoculars and field guides if you have them.
Before you come, visit my Events page in case there are changes or cancellations. Note: The outing will be canceled if there’s lightning!
(photo by Kate St.John)