Only 3 Days To Find the Crows!

Books & Events, Crows & Ravens
American crow closeup (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

27 December 2023

This Saturday, 30 December, is Pittsburgh’s annual Christmas Bird Count when we confirm the number of crows that come to town for the winter. Usually the count is 20,000 so after they skunked me three years ago (I counted only 220!) it’s been my mission to find the roost and count them all.

Last week I was confident that, thanks to you, we had found the crows. Carol Steytler saw them roosting near Heinz Lofts on 16 December so I went down there on the 19th — before I left town for the holiday — and saw more than 10,000 streaming in from Troy Hill to Heinz Lofts. I thought the Crow Count was going to be easy.

Hah! The crows have something else in mind.

Crows roosting at Allegheny River near Heinz Lofts, 7 Feb 2021, 7:40pm (photo by Kate St. John)

On Sunday 24 December Carol told me the crows were GONE! They weren’t near Heinz Lofts and when she drove around yesterday from 5-7pm she couldn’t find them anywhere!

Are we going to let 20,000 crows avoid the Count? No!

If you see a steady stream of crows at dusk please tell me where you saw them and where they were going.

Crows streaming past near Troy Hill (photo by Jeff Cieslak)

If you see crows at sunset making a racket in the trees, please tell me where they were!

There are only 3 days left until Pittsburgh’s Christmas Bird Count and (yikes!) I’m still out of town. Please help me find the crows!

Watch Birds in the Snow

Songbirds
Redpolls and pine grosbeak in this screenshot from Ontario Feederwatch Cam, 19 Dec 2023 (from CornellLab)

26 December 2023

Take a break from the holiday bustle to watch northern birds in the snow at two live feeder cams:

Live Feederwatch video from Ontario, Canada via Cornell Bird Cams on YouTube
Live video from Maine and the FinchResearchNetwork on YouTube

You’ll see chickadees and nuthatches as well as northern specialties like evening grosbeaks and redpolls. Enjoy!

Holiday Magic at Phipps

Books & Events
Phipps Conservatory Holiday Magic, 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)

24 December 2023

In the run-up to Christmas I was too busy to fit in a trip to Phipps Conservatory’s Holiday Magic but others have done so and provided videos.

See the show in Scott Hirschman’s 12-minute video, created with a wearable panoramic camera.

video embedded from Scott Hirschman on YouTube

There’s still time to visit in the next 2+ weeks. The show is open through 7 January 2024.

Order your tickets in advance –> Phipps Conservatory Tickets

Eats Fruit and Leaves

Bird Behavior, Migration
American robin eating fruit in early winter, Toronto (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

23 December 2023

Early this week a big flock of American robins came to my neighborhood, ate all the fruit they could find, and left.

On Monday morning, 18 December, they were frantically eating this pyracantha fruit outside my window. At one point I counted 45 but they were moving so fast I think there were more.

Pyracantha full of fruit, 23 Nov 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

The birds were frantic because they knew bad weather was coming. In mid afternoon it snowed.

Snow flurries 18 December 2023, 3pm (photo by Kate St. John)

The next morning the fruit was gone and so were the robins.

Sam pyracantha with no more fruit, 19 December 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)

American robins are still in Pittsburgh but they’re feasting in other locations. When the fruit is gone and the ground is frozen, the robins will leave.

p.s. Today’s title reminds me of the 2006 bestselling book on punctuation by Lynne Truss called Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The comma in her book title is really important. Did the panda eat, shoot a gun, and then leave? Or did the panda eat two things — shoots and leaves? … In the case of today’s blog title: Robins don’t eat leaves. They eat fruit and leave the neighborhood.

It’s the Best Time of Year for the Northern Lights

Weather & Sky
Northern lights (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

22 December 2023

The short days of winter give us longer nights at the best time of year for viewing the northern lights.

Pittsburgh is generally too far south and always has too much light pollution from city lights for viewing the aurora borealis so let’s enjoy beautiful scenes from the arctic.

video embedded from Richard Sidey on YouTube

Wondering what areas are due to see the northern lights tonight or tomorrow? See NOAA’s 2-day aurora forecast maps or the 30-minute forecast for predictions of beauty in the sky.

Solstice Begins the Shortest Season

Books & Events, Climate Change
December sunrise in Pittsburgh (photo by Kate St. John)

21 December 2023

When the sun stands still tonight at 10:27pm Eastern Time we’ll experience the shortest day of the year and begin the shortest season as well.

Regardless of the weather we change seasons four times a year based on astronomical events: December solstice, March equinox, June solstice, September equinox. Since these events occur at the same moment everywhere on Earth, each of the four seasons lasts the same amount of time for everyone. This is easiest to see on the Seasons page at timeanddate.com. A screenshot of Pittsburgh at 6am today is shown below.

Current and next seasons in Pittsburgh before the winter solstice (screenshot from timeanddate.com)

If you don’t like winter, the Northern Hemisphere has the best arrangement. Our astronomical seasons from shortest to longest are:

  • Winter = 88 days, 23 hrs, 39 mins (shortest)
  • Autumn = 89 days, 20 hrs, 37 mins
  • Spring = 92 days, 17 hrs, 44 mins
  • Summer = 93 days, 15 hrs, 52 mins (longest)

Climate change guarantees that winter is the shortest weather season, too. Winter was 21% of the year in 1952 but will take up only 9% of the year by the end of this century.

Average seasonal lengths in Northern Hemisphere, information from Phys.org

So I’m not counting on a white Christmas.

Read more about the weather-based lengths of the seasons at:

Future Summers Will Last Half The Year

American Chestnuts Too Rare to Roast

Nuts, Trees
American chestnut leaves, nut husks and nuts (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

20 December 2023

The Nutty Series: American chestnut

‘Chestnuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at your nose / Yuletide carols being sung by a choir / And folks dressed up like Eskimos.’

— NPR: The Story Behind the Christmas Song

Despite the popularity of The Christmas Song, you’ll never find nuts of the American chestnut in the wild. By the time The Christmas Song was written in 1945 mature American chestnuts were nearly gone from North America. Today there are so few surviving mature trees that Wikipedia lists only 25 locations though people are always searching.

American chestnuts (Castanea dentata) used to be more abundant than oaks within their native range.

Former range of the American chestnut (map from Wikimedia Commons)

Then in the late 1800s someone imported Japanese chestnut trees that had chestnut blight. Asian chestnuts are immune, American trees are not. First noticed at the Bronx Zoo in 1904, chestnut blight spread quickly and nothing could stop it. By 1950 mature American chestnut trees were gone throughout their range.

Chestnut blight is caused by a fungus that kills the above-ground portion of the tree by getting under the bark and girdling the trunk.

Chestnut blight on an American chestnut (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The stump lives and sends up seedlings though they die as saplings. The process repeats — seedlings, sapling, death. Most stumps are at least a hundred years old.

To find a chestnut in the woods I look for the leaves at knee height. The photo below shows a typical American chestnut stump with seedlings. This one has a dead sapling as well.

American chestnut seedlings sprouting from a stump surrounding a sapling that died of blight (photo by Richard Gardner, Bugwood.org)

For over 70 years arborists have been searching for a cure for chestnut blight and trying to breed immune American chestnuts. They have crossed the American chestnut with Chinese chestnuts, then back-crossed the hybrid to another American chestnut. These efforts, supported by The American Chestnut Foundation among many others, take decades to realize any success.

There are several experimental orchards in Pennsylvania. All are protected from deer.

American chestnut orchard in PA, 2012 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Arborists collect the nuts, not to roast but to plant, so we’ll have more chestnuts some day.

American chestnut nuts in husk (photo by USDA Forest Service – Southern Research Station , USDA Forest Service, SRS, Bugwood.org)

As potentially successful hybrids become available, they are planted more widely — still in protected areas — to test their immunity and build back the chestnut population.

Planting an American chestnut orchard at Sky Meadows, VA, 2015 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

At these locations the leaves are above knee height.

American chestnut leaves (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Perhaps in one to two hundred years the nuts of American chestnuts will be easy to find and we’ll appreciate the first phrase of The Christmas Song again.

(credits are in the captions)

Using Salt to Get Water

Musings & News, Trees
Salt shaker (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

19 December 2023

You’ve probably noticed that in humid weather table salt clumps in the salt shaker and sticks to the top. That’s because at the molecular level salt’s ions have a net positive charge that attracts atmospheric water which has a net negative charge. Salt literally pulls water out of the air and builds crystals. This process can make the top of the salt shaker moist or dampen a salted road on a humid day.

Can salt’s natural means of pulling water from the air be used to gather water in a larger way? Researchers led by Marieh B. Al- Handawi investigated Athel tamarisk (Tamarix aphylla), a desert plant native to Africa and Asia that takes up saline water with its roots and secretes excess salt through its leaves.

Tamarisk salt cedar, Tamarix aphylla (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The tiny leaves are arranged alternately, almost wrapping the branches. The salt crystalizes on the leaves. Look closely and you can see tiny crystals.

Closeup of Athel tamarisk branch (photo from PNAS: Harvesting of aerial humidity with natural hygroscopic salt excretions)

The smaller crystals stay on the plant and attract more water, especially overnight as shown on this branch in the early morning (8 a.m.) with condensed water droplets.

Athel tamarisk: A branch recorded in the early morning (8 a.m.) showed condensed water droplets. (PNAS: Harvesting of aerial humidity with natural hygroscopic salt excretions)

As the sun gets higher it evaporates the water, leaving behind larger salt crystals which fall to the ground.

A branch recorded in the late morning (11 a.m.) was encrusted with salt crystals. (PNAS: Harvesting of aerial humidity with natural hygroscopic salt excretions)

Every day the water cycle repeats: (A) branches attract water overnight, (B) water evaporates during the hot day while salt crystals grow, (C) water is gone and crystals are large, (D) during overnight high humidity the crystals attract water from the air and the plant absorbs the water. — paraphrased from PNAS: Harvesting of aerial humidity with natural hygroscopic salt excretions.

The tree is “drinking” from its leaves.

Researchers observed that at least one type of salt, lithium sulfate, forms small crystals that remain on the leaves and absorb water from the air. When the team added colored water to salty leaves, they watched the liquid stick to the crystal crust, then absorb into the plant’s leaves—evidence that the salty coating acts as a bona fide water collection mechanism.

— Science Magazine: Desert trees may pull water from thin, dry air using salt-encrusted leaves

The tree is very salt tolerant so this water collection process won’t translate directly for humans. But perhaps we’ll find a way.

For more information see Science Magazine: Desert trees may pull water from thin, dry air using salt-encrusted leaves or the PNAS publication Harvesting of aerial humidity with natural hygroscopic salt excretions.

(photos are from the Open Access PNAS article: Harvesting of aerial humidity with natural hygroscopic salt excretions)

Time’s Running Out: Where Are The Crows?

Bird Behavior, Crows & Ravens
Crows flying to the roost at sunset near Wilkins Ave, Oct 2020 (photo by Joanne Tyzenhouse)

18 December 2023

For the past several years Claire Staples and I have counted crows for the Pittsburgh Christmas Bird Count (CBC). In a good year we count 20,000. In a bad year, 220. Stunning, isn’t it. The difference is not in the actual number of crows. It’s whether we can find them.

Please help. Let me know where you see crows overnight or after sunset, especially next week (after Christmas)!

You would think that 20,000 crows would be hard to miss but in late December they get tricky. Just before the CBC the crows change their roost several times or they split the roost and, suddenly, we can’t find half of them.

Several of you responded to Why Do 1000’s of Crows Roost in Town? with dates and locations. Your reports helped me figure out the crows moved on 11 December.

  • Dec 10: Up until Dec 11 Tom saw them roosting near the VA Hospital in Oakland.
  • Dec 11: Jeff Cieslak saw 1000s flying over the North Side parallel to Allegheny River, heading upstream.
  • Dec 12: I counted 4,000 flying west-southwest over Schenley Park’s golf course at dusk. Where were they going?
  • Dec 13: Sue Faust reported them hanging out on the North Side and flying over the Strip District at dusk.
  • Dec 16: Carol Steytler counted as many as 10,000 roosting upstream of the 16th Street Bridge across from Heinz Lofts (across the river?).
Twilight over the Allegheny River at Pittsburgh. Crows swirl near Heinz chimneys, 6 Feb 2021, 5:50pm, taken at 25th St (photo by Kate St. John)

Carol’s 16 December sighting matches a roost they used back in February 2021 (photo above) but they didn’t stay there long and I fear they won’t stay now. And this is only half of them.

Where will the crows be 12 days from now?

I know I’m going to miss their next move because I’ll be out of town December 21-28. Your help is really crucial. Please let me know where you see crows overnight or after sunset. Let me know where you see a big flock swirling. Claire & I also need to find a good vantage point for counting them.

Fingers crossed that we’ll successfully count the crows on Saturday 30 December.