Category Archives: Schenley Park

A Two Week Trip

Migration, Schenley Park

Wood Thrush (photo by Steve Gosser)

16 May 2013

I heard my first wood thrush this year in Schenley Park on April 24 but the real influx didn’t occur until May 8.  On that morning the wood thrush population in the park doubled overnight.

Each bird made the trip from eastern Honduras or Nicaragua in 13-15 days.  Thanks to ongoing migration studies by Bridget Stutchbury’s University of York team, we now know where wood thrushes spend the winter, how long it takes to get here, and the routes that individual birds take.

Stutchbury pioneered the use of tiny geolocators, smaller than a penny, that record only two things: the universal date-time (UTC) and the amount of light.  Crunch a year of data and you get sunrise, sunset and day length which reveal the bird’s location each day.  To collect this data, the tagged bird had to return from migration (a 60% chance) and be re-trapped to remove the geolocator (90% success rate, skill required!).

Now that the team has tracked some individual wood thrushes for several years they’ve found that:

  • Wood thrushes fly more than 300 miles a day on migration.
  • In the fall, they may stopover in the southern U.S. or the Yucatan for one to four weeks before proceeding to their final destination.
  • They dawdle in the fall but return two to six times faster in the spring because they barely stop at all.
  • Wood thrushes who live near each other in Pennsylvania don’t scatter when they get to Central America.  A single breeding population from Pennsylvania spends the winter in a narrow band of forest in eastern Honduras and Nicaragua.  If that forest disappears, so will all those wood thrushes.
  • Wood thrushes don’t use local weather cues to determine when to head north.  Instead they have built in endogenous triggers similar to long-distance shorebirds.  Some of their triggers are so accurate that individuals begin northward migration on the same day every year.
  • Though wood thrushes tend to have a favorite departure date they don’t take the same route every year.  The route depends on weather and fitness.
  • First year birds tend to leave the wintering grounds later than those who’ve made the trip before.

So I’ll bet those early wood thrushes are the older, experienced birds who left Central America around April 10.  Two weeks and more than 2,000 miles later they arrived in my neighborhood on the day the rest of the flock left the wintering grounds.

Awesome!

For more on these studies, click here for background on the 2010 report and here for their 2012 findings.

(photo by Steve Gosser)

April or May Apples?

Phenology, Plants & Fungi, Schenley Park

Maypple single leaf will not have a flower (photo by Kate St. John)

(While we wait for the peregrine eggs to hatch, let’s look at some plants.)

I used to say with confidence that mayapples bloom in May but I got worried last year when they came out in April.

This year I saw two plants blooming in Frick Park on April 17.  I started to worry again, but last weekend’s cold weather put the flowers on hold.  Just to be sure I went out and checked on them.

Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) are perennial plants that grow in colonies in open woods. When they first come up the colonies look like miniature forests of green umbrellas.

Each plant has one or two leaves but only the two-leaved plants have flowers because the flower stalk grows from the Y between the leaves.

Above are two mayapples with single leaves in Schenley Park.  Nice, but they won’t have flowers.

Below, a nascent double-leaf plant shows the flower bud between the leaves.
Mayapple bud and closed leaves (photo by Kate St. John)

 

As the plant grows the umbrellas unfurl with the flower bud between them.
Mayapple double leaves beginning to open (photo by Kate St. John)

 

Then the bud turns its head downward and the flower opens vertically or face down. The leaves are so big and shady that it’s hard to see the flower.

Schenley Park’s mayapples weren’t blooming yet (aha!) so I found a picture of a blooming plant on Wikimedia Commons.  It’s on a hill so the photographer can look up to see the flower.

Mayapple in flower with twin leaves (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

 

If you really want to see mayapple flowers up close you have to lie on your belly to do it.

I’m sure that’s what Chuck Tague did to get this photo.   I’m leaving the dirty work to him. 😉

Maypple flower closeup (photo by Chuck Tague)

 

A week from today will be May 1. Unless the weather heats up really fast, I think it’s safe to say these will be “May” apples this year.

(leaf and bud photos by Kate St. John. complete flowering plant from Wikimedia Commons. Flower closeup by Chuck Tague.)

Tiny Tents

Insects, Schenley Park

Tentworms on a cherry sapling in Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)

20 April 2013

With warm weather, migrating birds, and new leaves come the leaf eaters like these tentworms building their tent on a choke cherry sapling in Schenley Park.

I noticed the first tents Friday morning after Thursday’s very hot weather.

I wonder what this weekend’s cold weather will do to them…

(photo by Kate St. John)

Putting On The Green

Phenology, Schenley Park, Trees

Ohio buckeye leafing out (photo by Kate St. John)
This week the trees in Pittsburgh are putting on the green.

The flank of Mt. Washington is my favorite place to see it.  All winter the hillside is a flat brown color without the look of individual trees but now each leafing tree shows up as a pale green crown.  Some are white with flowers.

This appearance is ephemeral.  Soon the leaves will be large and shady and the hillside will look uniformly green.  So now while the trees are changing so fast here’s a close look at what they’ve been up to.

Above, in Schenley Park an yellow buckeye leafs out.  Below at a later stage the flower buds emerge. (*see the Comments for discussion on this tree)
Ohio buckeye flower buds (photo by Kate St. John)

The bitternut hickory is not so quick but its mustard yellow bud has begun a leaf.

Bitternut hickory bud opening (photo by Kate St. John)

The pignut hickory’s end bud is furry, shiny and enormous.
Pignut hickory bud (photo by Kate St. John)

These catkins look like caterpillars.
(Dark bark, perhaps a sweet birch. Do you know what tree this is?)
Catkins that look like caterpillars (photo by Kate St. John)

And the crown jewels are the magnolias, native to Asia.  This is a star magnolia.  Wow!
Star magnolia blooming (photo by Kate St. John)

(photos by Kate St. John)

Raccoons Getting Active

Mammals, Schenley Park

After a quiet winter this week’s warm weather has brought out the raccoons.

On Monday I heard a strange noise above my head in Schenley Park.  Two raccoons were arguing high in a tree.

Then late at night I heard the scratchy sound of raccoons disagreeing in my back yard.  Safe indoors, my cat looked in the direction of the sound but was unimpressed.

Fortunately we don’t have a cat door or we might have had a visitor like the one in this video… !

 

(video from YourDailyFunny on YouTube)

Making The Snow Fly

Bird Behavior, Birds of Prey, Schenley Park

Red-tailed hawk in snow, Schenley Park (photo by Gregory Diskin)

If you have to sit outdoors in winter, you’re bound to get snowed on.

Last month during a particularly wet snowfall, Gregg Diskin found this red-tailed hawk perched in Schenley Park.  The bird was trying to stay warm and dry but it was a challenge.  His feathers were wet and his feet were getting cold.

See how he’s tucked one foot into his breast feathers?  It looks like he’s holding his coat closed.  Brrrrr!

Fortunately feathers are very good insulation.  You don’t realize how well they work until the hawk scratches his head.

Watch the snow fly!

Red-tailed hawk makes the snow fly (photo by Gregory Diskin)

(photos by Gregory Diskin)

Occasional Fisher

Migration, Schenley Park, Water and Shore

Belted kingfishers don’t nest in Schenley Park but they do visit during migration.  Panther Hollow stream and lake are their favorite haunts.

Visiting kingfishers shuttle up and down the valley to find favorable fishing spots.  They perch above the man-made lake and stare at the cloudy water.  The fish are hard to see.  If they don’t catch a meal at the lake the birds head down Junction Hollow to the Monongahela River.

Junction Hollow must be amazing to kingfishers because it’s a waterless valley.  Four Mile Run was there but it’s buried beneath the playing fields and bike trail.  Those amenities are making the best of an unnatural situation.

The Run was buried long ago but any hope of daylighting it was dashed in 1989 when Sol Gross bought 28 acres of Junction Hollow and further buried the valley under construction debris generated by his demolition company.  The City stopped his dumping and everyone ended up in court, but the damage was done.  The creek is so far underground now that it’s way too expensive to remove the debris.  Hence the fields.

Kingfishers come and go through Schenley Park in the fall.  Gregory Diskin found this female at the lake on September 30, then saw none until last week.

When the lake freezes this bird will leave for a site with open water.  Until then, keep your ears open for the rattling call of an occasional fisher.

(photo by Gregory Diskin)

 

p.s.  Want to see a kingfisher soon?  Check Duck Hollow where Nine Mile Run empties into the Monongahela River.

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The Trees With Leaves Are…

Schenley Park, Trees, Winter Weeds & Trees

13 November 2012

At this point in November most of the trees in western Pennsylvania have lost their leaves.  There are exceptions and you’re likely to find them in parks and residential areas.

Yesterday morning I took this picture at the big bend on Greenfield Road in Schenley Park.  If you didn’t know it was a recent photo you’d think it was taken in early October at the peak of autumn color.

These are Norway maples whose native range in Europe extends further north than Pittsburgh.  Our short November days are the same length as those they experience in October back home.  For instance, the sun will be up for exactly 10 hours today in western Pennsylvania.  That’s the day length in mid October in Scandinavia.

Right now our native trees are bare or retain just a few leaves at the top (tulip trees) or brittle brown leaves overall (oaks and beeches).

The non-natives plants are out of synch and late November is the one time of year when you can easily see them across the landscape.

Make an effort to identify the trees and plants with green or colorful leaves and you’ll find that they’re probably imported.

(photo by Kate St. John)

The Trees Are Bare?

Phenology, Schenley Park, Trees, Winter Weeds & Trees

Lots of the trees are bare now that Hurricane Sandy came through Pennsylvania.  But not everywhere.

Here, the trees look wintry in Schenley Park on November 1.

But just around the corner the view from Panther Hollow Bridge is mixed.  The large sycamore is bare — see the ghostly white bark? — but the red oaks still show off their russet tones.  (These pictures are dark because it was raining. It rained every day last week.)

 

Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, winter comes earlier.

Here’s a picture from the Quehanna Wild Area taken on October 13.  Three weeks ago most of the trees were already bare in this part of Clearfield County.

What’s it like where you live?

(photos by Kate St. John)