@KeepingItWild set up a big mirror in the woods in Australia (i.e. “the bush”) and captured animal reactions. Interestingly many of the animals in this 8-minute video are not native to Australia. For instance: red deer, rabbits and pheasants.
If you’ve been to the American Southwest, Central America or northern Colombia, you may have encountered a white-nosed coati (Nasua narica), the tropical daytime equivalent of the raccoon. Like his cousin he has a long striped tail, can climb trees and is not picky about what he eats.
Interestingly he loves balsa (Ochroma pyramidale) nectar and is important to the tree’s propagation. Coatis insert their long narrow snouts into the flowers, get pollen on their noses and move on to pollinate other flowers. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
Coatis are relatively rare in the American Southwest so it was cool when this one made an appearance at the Visitor Center at Coronado NPS in southeastern Arizona.
These animal cousins might encounter each other within the coati’s more limited range though they operate at different times — the coati during the day, the raccoon at night.
Snowy owl at Presque Isle State Park, 29 Nov 2013 (photo by Shawn Collins)
7 January 2024
It’s been 10 years since the spectacular winter of 2013-2014 when snowy owls irrupted in the Lower 48 States. That winter they invaded the Northeastern U.S. and traveled as far south as coastal North Carolina, Florida and Bermuda!
This year a few snowies are visiting the Great Lakes region but the only concentration of owls is in western Canada. You can see the difference in their eBird sightings in these maps of 2013-2014 versus 2023-2024. (Click here to see the eBird Explore map.)
In 2013-2014 there were so many snowy owls that photographers often saw peregrine falcons attacking them. Steve Gosser captured this still shot at Presque Isle State Park in December 2013.
Peregrine falcon attacking snowy owl at Gull Point, Erie, PA, 1 Dec 2013 (photo by Steve Gosser)
Tom Johnson filmed two peregrines harassing snowy owls at Stone Harbor, New Jersey in January 2014.
Peregrines attack snowy owls at Stone Harbor, NJ in Jan 2014 (Video embedded from Cornell Lab on YouTube)
It was also a snowy weather winter. 2013-2014 was very cold with enduring snow on the ground because of the “Polar Vortex.”
Afternoon light in Schenley Park, 3 Jan 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
6 January 2024
Pittsburgh had a rare moment of sunshine on 3 January. I was happy to be outdoors during the Golden Hour in Schenley Park.
This El Niño winter has been so warm that bulbs sprouted in my neighborhood in December. Here are four of the many I found on New Years Eve. That exposed bulb would never have survived in a normal winter like those we used to have just a decade ago.
Flower shoots emerge on New Year’s Eve, 31 Dec 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Pittsburgh’s deer won this round.
At Carnegie Museum in Oakland this week I discovered that deer damage near the rear parking lot was so severe that gardeners removed all the Japanese yews. It took two years and an ever-burgeoning deer population to reach this stage.
All the yews have been removed at Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, 3 Jan 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Last August there were fewer yews than in 2022 because the damaged ones had been removed. Unfortunately the deer were severely browsing the now exposed healthy yews.
Damaged yews at Carnegie Museum in August 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Here’s what they looked like in August 2022. Those in front had been eaten bare and died. The next tier was severely browsed and those in back were still normal because the dead and dying yews protected them.
Deer damage on yews at Carnegie Museum, 16 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
The bank of yews could not survive with so many deer.
Dorothy at the Cathedral of Learning on Banding Day, 17 May 2013 (photo by Peter Bell)
5 January 2024
My Audubon calendar had a surprise for me this morning. Today is National Bird Day, a little-known celebration established in 2002 by BornFreeUSA in coordination with the Avian Welfare Coalition. Since both organizations focus primarily on the well being of captive animals and birds, the celebration has not gained much notice in the birding community. However it’s a great excuse to celebrate my own favorite bird.
The peregrine falcon pictured above is the only wild bird I’ve ever been able to recognize and learn as an individual. Dorothy arrived at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning in 2001 at age 2 and had her first successful nest in 2002, the year that National Bird Day was established.
As I got to know Dorothy I learned about her species and became addicted to peregrines. She also taught me a lot about herself and in retrospect the unique characteristics of her generation, the peregrines that repopulated eastern North America.
Dorothy died eight years ago and still is in my heart, especially as nesting season approaches. Here’s a look back at what a great bird she was. Never captive. Always wild.
No. In both cases they have smelled something interesting, perhaps a female in heat, and are breathing through their mouths and opening their airways to take in as much scent as possible into a special olfactory organ called the vomeronasal organ.
They are making a flehmen response. On Throwback Thursday, learn more and see a video in this vintage article:
As I mentioned last month, though winter is the best time of year to see the aurora borealis it is rare if not impossible to see it anywhere but in the far north. The photo at top was taken in Norway while the one below gives a different perspective from an airplane at 36,000 feet above Canada.
In both cases the photos were taken inside our atmosphere below the aurora. What if you could see the aurora from above?
On 21 January 2016 NASA astronaut Scott Kelly took photos of the aurora from the International Space Station (ISS) as it traveled over Canada. Here’s what the aurora looks like from above in his series of photos.
Coyotes (Canis latrans) live in Pittsburgh but you might never notice because most of them keep a low profile. In Pennsylvania coyotes are hunted and trapped all year long — and they know it — so they generally avoid humans and operate at night.
Occasionally coyotes howl in Pittsburgh, usually from the woods, but I have yet to hear it. Since they’re larger than their western cousins you probably won’t see an amazing performance like this one in Tucson.
Just a coyote howling from the rooftop of a car in Tucson, Ariz.
Crows coming in to roost at Robinson Ext & Vera, 31 Dec 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
31 December 2023
Success! Last night, Saturday 30 December, our team counted 15,000 crows at their roost on Robinson Ext and Brackenridge Streets during the Pittsburgh Christmas Bird Count (CBC). It was a big challenge compared to last year when we could stand in one place and count 20,000 flying by in the distance. This year we had to chase them for two hours, texting each other with updates, until the crows finally picked a spot. In darkness and rain we think we were unable to see another 5,000 but we can’t count what we can’t see. So the official count is 15,000.
Carol Steytler, Sue Faust and I did a dry run on Friday night. That evening the western stream flew over the Allegheny River to stage at Cliff Street before moving on. My brief video shows how impossible it is to count them before they settle.
video by Kate St. John
That night we followed about half the flock to Wylie Avenue near Lawson, but where did the rest of them go? Fortunately it was just a dry run before Count Day.
On Saturday night Claire Staples joined us for the CBC and we split up to find the crows. Sue waited for them on Arcena Street but not a single crow came to the bluff above Bigelow. Carol found them staging near Wylie and Herron but when Claire and I caught up we could tell the crows were going to leave; there are no streetlights on that patch of woods.
By 5:30pm the crows had picked a roost and we gathered near Vera Street to watch them swirl overhead in the rain. We counted them in trees and on the Sports Dome but could not see how many were on nearby roofs and other places out of sight, so the official count is 15,000. Maybe next year we’ll count all of them.
Thank you to the intrepid team — Carol Steytler, Sue Faust and Claire Staples — who braved rain, cold, and darkness to count the crows. We were up for the challenge and we found almost all of them. And thanks to my readers for your tips and sightings. We’re done now until next year. 🙂
And we’ve learned a valuable lesson: If you want to count crows, don’t expect to find them in the same place or even flying the same route every night.
