Nick Liadis of Bird Lab holds an ovenbird to be banded, 7 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
27 September 2023
Only 5 people can come on this outing. You must sign up by leaving a comment on the blog form below. First come first served.
Come with me to Pittsburgh’s newest city park on Tuesday Oct 3, at 8:30 am (rain date Wed Oct 4) to see Bird Lab’s Nick Liadis band migratory birds at Hays Woods.
Meet me at the Hays Woods Agnew Rd Trailhead parking lot at 8:30am. From there we will walk through the woods for 20 minutes to get to the banding site. Expect to spend at least an hour on site, then a 20 minute walk to return.
Nick Liadis & Lisa Kaufman at Bird Lab banding, Hays Woods, 7 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Every day is different during migration. When I visited the banding operation on 7 September 2022 we saw warblers and a female cardinal. Best Bird was the ovenbird pictured at top.
I can’t predict what birds we’ll see but we will certainly see them up close. It’s sure to be good.
For a sneak preview see Linda Roth’s Facebook Live video of the banding on Tues 26 Sept: https://fb.watch/njIOW32rqr/
If you are one of the lucky 5 participants I will notify you via email. (Comments require that you enter an email address.)
Hays Woods is the City of Pittsburgh’s wildest, least developed park. The trail to the site is flat but don’t expect amenities. The only porta-john is at the parking lot.
Two bumblebees sleeping on goldenrod, Duck Hollow, 18 Sep 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
26 September 2023
Last week at Duck Hollow I found two bumblebees asleep on goldenrod. The temperature was a little chilly but the morning was bright and sunny. Were the bees waiting to warm up in the sun?
Bumblebee sleeping on goldenrod, 18 Sep 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Eight weeks ago I highlighted the reason why male bees sleep on flowers in July and August. Males don’t live in a hive so they sleep outdoors. They are solitary, searching for a mate, and nearing the end of their lives.
Female bumblebees return to the hive at night if they can. In the hot months of July and August females are indoors at night. However bad weather or chilly temperatures may force them to sleep outdoors until they warm up the next morning.
So I wondered are these sleeping bumblebees male or female? I can tell with a closer look at the bees.
Female bumblebees bring food to the hive so they have pollen sacks on their hind legs. If you see a full pollen sack on a bee’s hind leg you can be sure it’s female, as shown on the right in the photo below.
Male and female bumblebees (photo by Kate St. John)
A bee without pollen, like the one on the left, is either a female who delivered her pollen and has just come back for more, or it’s a male without a pollen sack.
I can see two obvious differences between male and female in these photos.
Male
Female
Hindlegs
Hairy
Smooth convex-shaped structure for holding pollen. (This one contains pollen!)
Pilewort seeds blow away in the wind, 20 Sep 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
25 September 2023
Have you seen white fluff blowing in the wind lately? The fluff is not from dandelions. At this time of year it’s from pilewort.
Pilewort (Erechtites hieraciifolius) is a native plant in the Aster family that looks very weedy, even ugly. At two to eight feet tall the flower heads on the tips of the branches look like seed pods because they barely open to expose pistils and stamens. To appreciate the flower you need a magnifying glass. Its beauty is microscopic.
It doesn’t take much wind to set it going. Do you see the flying fluff in this closeup? Look for the tiny yellow arrow in this photo and the one at top.
Pilewort near Phipps’ parking lot, 20 Sep 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Why is it called pilewort? The common name literally means “hemorrhoid plant.” Penn State Extension explains.
Native Americans used American burnweed [pilewort] to treat rashes caused by exposure to poison ivy and poison sumac. Medicinally, it has also been used as an emetic and to treat dysentery, eczema, diarrhea, and hemorrhoids. It has been used to create a blue dye for wool and cotton and, despite its intense flavor, can be eaten raw or cooked.
Pileweed’s other common name is American burnweed because it grows easily after brush fires. It loves disturbed soil and is easy to find by the side of the road, in churned up gardens, and in urban areas. In this age of bulldozers, roto-tillers and garden digging, pilewort has many opportunities to germinate.
I found a lot of it at Duck Hollow.
Pilewort at Duck Hollow, 18 Sep 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)Pilewort at Duck Hollow, 18 Sep 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Perhaps it’s a good thing that pilewort grows prolifically. A 2002 study in Japan found that Erechtites hieraciifolius is good at absorbing the greenhouse gas, nitrogen dioxide, turning it into an organic form.
It may not be beautiful but pilewort plants itself by the side of the road and then cleans the air.
Not only did coffee make the concrete 30% stronger but the already used grounds did not end up in a landfill, a significant savings since the world’s coffee drinkers create 10 billion kg (11 million tons!) of spent coffee every year.
If the idea catches on, coffee waste will reduce the need for sand in concrete …
Will piles of sand at concrete plants be replaced by piles of biochar coffee? Imagine what it would smell like at a cement plant, like this one along the Parkway East near Uptown, satellite view below.
Large carpenter bee sips from a passionflower, Phipps, 20 Sep 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
23 September 2023
Last Wednesday I watched an enormous carpenter bee sipping from passionflowers at Phipps Conservatory’s outdoor garden.
The passionflower’s nectar treat is directly below its overhanging anthers and stigmas. On Wednesday the anthers were in position to touch the hairy spot on the bee’s back. The stigmas were too high to touch the bee.
The pollination parts of a passionflower. An anther touches a bee, 20 Sep 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Later, the anthers and stigmas will trade positions. The anthers will pull back. The stigmas that collect pollen for the ovary will touch the bee.
Two juvenile Cooper’s hawks in Frick Park, 14 July 2022 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
22 September 2023
Every year young Cooper’s hawks (Accipiter cooperii) fledge in June/July and learn to hunt in July/August. As soon as they’re self sufficient they disperse, and then they start to migrate.
Cooper’s hawks eat birds for a living so they migrate with their prey. Their peak migration continues now through mid October at the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch.
How did they get to this point? Let’s take a look back to August as some young Cooper’s hawks perfect their hunting techniques in New Jersey. It involves a lot of jumping.
In Pittsburgh the winter solstice invariably arrives on 21 December, but the 21st never works for the autumnal equinox.
As an astronomical event, the equinox arrives everywhere on Earth at exactly the same moment but is expressed as different dates and times because of longitude and time zones. Hawaii’s equinox is on the 22nd while Paris and Johannesburg have the same date and time because of time zones.
Universal Time
23 Sep, 6:50AM UTC
Pittsburgh
23 Sep, 2:50AM EDT
Honolulu, HI
22 Sep, 8:49PM HST
Tokyo
23 Sep 22, 3:49PM JST
Paris
23 Sep, 8:49AM CET
Johannesburg, SA
23 Sep, 8:49AM SAST
For most of the Earth this month’s equinox will occur on the 23rd. When it does everyone’s sunset will be exactly west, just like the photo above.
Sticky tape put on trees by an unknown Frick Park visitor, 19 Sept 2023 (photo by Michelle Kienholz)
20 September 2023
Six years ago, when spotted lanternflies (Lycorma delicatula) were a new plague in North America, no one knew if they would destroy Pennsylvania’s forests but scientists assumed the worst and warned accordingly. However, they also conducted long term studies of spotted lanternflies’ effect on Pennsylvania trees and agriculture. For PA trees there is happy news: Spotted lanternflies are not a danger to Pennsylvania forests. There’s no need to protect our trees from lanternflies because they are not hurting them.
Penn State subjected four species of trees to four years of spotted lanternfly super-infestation by surrounding the trees with mesh nets that kept hordes of lanternflies inside. Silver maple, weeping willow, and river birch were barely phased by the bugs and did quite well in the third year of the study. The bugs’ host plant, the invasive tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), did not grow during the plague.
“If you have a vineyard and you have lanternflies on your grape vines, you should be very worried because they can kill grape vines,” Hoover said. “But if you’re a homeowner and you have large trees on your property and you have lanternflies on them, I don’t think you should worry about it.”
Yesterday an unknown visitor to Frick Park put sticky tape on some trees. Here’s what one section killed: 12 spotted lanternflies, 25+ pollinators (yellowjackets), 70 warbler-food insects (tiny flying insects). More beneficial insects died than lanternflies. Needless to say the tape has already been removed. (Click here to see how sticky tape kills birds!)
Sticky tape deaths in Frick Park, 19 Sep 2023 (photo by Michelle Kienholz)
Sticky tape is bad and pointless. If you put it up, remove it.
Magnolia warbler in fall, Sept 2018 (photo by Dave Brooke)
19 September 2023
Right now warbler migration is at its autumn peak in southwestern Pennsylvania but, as usual, the birds are hard to identify. Their fall plumage is dull and confusing, they move fast so we never get a good look at them, and we don’t get much practice because many of them are here only in September. And then they’re gone.
This year it dawned on me that the magnolia warbler (Setophaga magnolia) is super-easy to identify if all you see is its butt, as shown at top and below.
Note that the magnolia warbler is the only warbler with a white belly, white undertail coverts, white undertail and a large black straight-edged tip on the tail. It looks as if this warbler was dipped tail first in black paint.
I highly recommend the 560-page The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle which I use at home after noting the warbler’s key features in the field. In my opinion the book is indispensable if you take photographs.
The view from Hays Woods, September 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Here’s PPC’s description:
Come check out Pittsburgh’s newest city park for an exclusive hike with Bird Lab Avian Ecologist, Nick Liadis, and Jared Belsky, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Ecological Restoration Coordinator, Hays Woods.
Explore Hays Woods like never before, while learning about native plants and trees and how regional birds interact within this dense urban forest. This adventure will incorporate a mixture of species identification and bird watching. Fall migration is the best time to catch sight and sound of the migrating birds overhead.
Hike leaders are Jared Belsky of Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy who manages PPC projects on site (photo on left) and Nick Liadis of Bird Lab who bands birds at Hays during spring and fall migration (photo on right). Both have extensive knowledge of Hays Woods from hands on experience.
p.s. The Hays Woods – Agnew Rd Trailhead has a small gravel parking lot. If this hike is well attended you may have to park on the street. GPS = 40.39852,-79.96324
(photo of Jared Belsky by Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, all other photos by Kate St. John)
