16 January 2024
Time for a quiz!
Name at least 5 bird species native to southern Africa in the Old World that also occur in the New World (the Americas). The regions to consider are green on the map above.
Hint: There’s a surprising number of wading birds!
Leave a comment with your answer. My answer will be in the comments, too.
15 January 2024
Great horned owls (Bubo virginianus) never build a nest. Instead they take over a large stick nest that someone else built — that of a red-tailed hawk, osprey or bald eagle. Ideally the original owner is not present at the time, which is usually the case because great horned owls are the earliest to nest(*).
In Pennsylvania they claim a nest as early as mid December and lay eggs as early as 22 January. By the time the original owner discovers the owls in residence, it’s usually too late to make a fuss. Great horned owls are powerful and attack silently at night.
There’s an old bald eagle nest on camera at the Hilton Head Island Land Trust which eagles have not reclaimed since they lost two eaglets there. Instead a pair of great horned owls took over the nest and the female is already incubating two eggs.
Watch the nest on the Hilton Head Island Land Trust Raptorcam. Follow their latest news on Hilton Head Island Land Trust’s Facebook page.
Three years ago our own Hays eagles had a great horned owl problem. Here’s a trip down memory lane:
In February and March 2021 a great horned owl harassed the Hays bald eagles, apparently trying to chase them away even after they were incubating eggs. The owl went so far as to silently knock the male eagle off his roost on the night of 2 March! In the end the Hays eagles prevailed.
(*) There’s only one bird in Pennsylvania that nests earlier than a great horned owl and that’s because it nests 365 days a year (or 366 during this leap year). Click here to see who it is.
p.s. Thanks to Mary DeVaughn for sending me news of the HHI Raptorcam.
14 January 2024
As we anticipate peregrine nesting season at University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, let’s take a look back at last year’s highlights. Well actually “low lights.” The nest was not successful last year but the reason why gives us hope for great things for 2024.
Pitt Peregrine Highlights in 2023 (click the links for more detail)
The year began at the Cathedral of Learning with Ecco and Morela, the resident male and female. We hoped for a first egg around St. Patrick’s Day, 17 March.
In early February Morela seemed distracted, obviously checking the sky during a courtship session on the 6th. The distraction continued.
By 21 March Morela had not laid an egg, yet she disappeared for four days so I wondered if there was a female challenger for the nest. When Morela returned on 25 March the intruder did not stay away. For 4-5 weeks Morela tried without success to lay an egg.
By May Morela was egg bound and increasingly ill. She disappeared forever on 12 May.
On 14 May a banded female peregrine, new to the Cathedral of Learning, showed up on camera. Carla hatched at the Indiana Michigan Power Center (IMPC) Building in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 2020 and flew here on her own. Carla was named when she was banded (Black/Blue S/07).
Though it was too late to start a family in late May, Carla and Ecco have strengthened their pair bond ever since. This 4 minute video from 30 July, sped up to double-time, shows the pair bowing for an extended period. Notice that there was no sound on the video last year. I promise there will be sound this year!
Carla will nest for the first time this spring as we watch her on the National Aviary’s Falconcam that will begin streaming on 1 February.
Until the stream begins, view the nest from the CL snapshot page and get in practice ahead of time. Click here to learn how to tell Carla and Ecco apart.
(credits are in the captions)
13 January 2024
This week featured spectacular sun effects and high water.
On 11 January I captured this photo of a sun pillar at sunrise while Dave DiCello got an even better shot from the West End Bridge.
Friday’s sunrise was spectacular in a different way.
Tuesday 9 January produced the classic Gleam at Sunset in which a day of thick cloud cover ended with a gap on the western horizon and 30 minutes of sun. Here’s what the gap looked like just after sunset from the roof deck of my building.
Twenty minutes earlier I had viewed the gleam from below when it lit the tops of trees and buildings … like this.
Meanwhile we’re only 13 days into January and have already had 2.24 inches of precipitation — 1.06 inches above normal for the month. All that water ends up in the rivers so it’s no wonder that the Monongahela River was running high at Duck Hollow on 11 January.
It was raining when I woke up this morning.
12 January 2024
The weather is going to turn nasty tomorrow and very cold next week so it’s time to stay indoors and watch birds where it’s warm.
Tropical birds and feeder-hungry mammals visit the Panama Fruit Feeder Cam at Canopy Lodge. The black-crested jay, above, takes a look at a potential meal while a mother agouti, below, brings her cubs to the banquet. Agoutis show up in dark too.
Watch birds where it’s warm on Panama Fruit Feeder Cam.
Follow @PanamaFeederCam on Twitter for quick updates.
11 January 2024
Only a few days ago I was lamenting that we weren’t having a snowy winter, neither snow nor snowy owls. Well, be careful what you ask for! A few days of bitter cold are coming to Pittsburgh next week. If Lake Erie freezes, arctic gulls will fly south to find open water on the rivers. The photo above shows some cold and happy birders looking at rare gulls at the Point in January 2015.
So what are the chances this will happen next week?
As of this morning, the forecasted low temperature for dawn on Wednesday 17 January is 9°F. This map for next Monday sure looks like we’re in a “polar vortex.” Cold, right?
But will it be cold long enough to freeze Lake Erie and send the gulls south? Probably not. The eastern Great Lakes ice map as of yesterday, 10 Jan 2024, shows nearly 100% open water (white).
There’s not even a hint of ice (blue) on most of Lake Erie and the Great Lakes ice-to-date graph for winter 2023-24 indicates that ice is at a near record low. There’s a lot of cooling off to do before the lakes will freeze.
So next week I’ll have to wear my Minnesota gear to go outdoors but it’s unlikely there will be any unusual birds out there. Will I want to go out in 9°F anyway? I’ll have to wait and see.
(credits are in the cations)
10 January 2024
Today I found an illustration that’s full of surprises showing six animals in the rearing up position. With two humans for scale the animals are: an African elephant, a gerenuk, and four Sauropoda dinosaurs: Diplodocus, Giraffatitan, Barosaurus, and Opisthocoelicaudia. The black and white dot on the elephant and dinosaurs indicates the center of mass (COM) for balance; the tiny black square is the location of the hip socket.
The elephant and gerenuk (giraffe gazelle) both rear up to reach food but for many decades the idea that Sauropods lifted themselves from the ground was considered scientifically inaccurate.
This 1907 illustration of Diplodocus by Charles Robert Knight is so noted on Wikimedia Commons.
The note says the picture is not factual because “Sauropods were terrestrial.”
Did Sauropods always keep all four feet on the ground? They ate tall plants, two examples of which still live today in California: coastal redwoods and giant sequoias. It makes sense they would have to rear up to reach them.
And most Sauropods had very long tails to use as props the way woodpeckers do.
Put it all together with a lot more scientific information and the rearing up makes sense. Here’s the description on the illustration, formatted for clarity, that explains why Sauropods were better adapted for rearing than many modern mammals, such as elephants:
— Wikimedia Commons: Description of Sauopods Rearing illustration
- Sauropod necks and torsos are lightened because of an extensive air sac system which, combined with long, muscular, and dense tails, helps shift the centre of mass (COM) backwards, closer to the hip socket in some sauropod species.
- Some sauropods have retroverted pelves which might have allowed the legs to maintain greater functionality when rearing.
- [Bones in] the anterior part of the tail suggest flexibility, the tail being able to serve as a prop when in a tripodal posture.
- The hip socket allowed for a large range of motion, more than needed for normal quadrupedal walking.
- The wide strongly flared pelvis was thought to further aid stability in a tripodal posture.
Specifically for Dippy, “The Center of Mass (COM) of Diplodocus is estimated to be very close to the hip socket. This makes prolonged rearing possible and does not require much effort to do it. Combined with its long, massive tail acting as a prop, it was also very stable. Mallison found Diplodocus to be better adapted for rearing then an elephant.”
The description also points out that Giraffatitan, the second dino from the left, would have a hard time rearing. His COM was too far from his hip socket and his tail was short.
So it’s likely that Dippy reared up on his hind legs and could do so for hours while he browsed the trees like a deer.
Way cool, Dippy!
(credits are in the captions with links)
9 January 2024
When we look in a mirror we know we’re looking at ourselves, but most animals cannot master this. In fact, baby humans don’t recognize themselves in mirrors until about age two.
@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.
According to Wikipedia, the only animals known to have passed the mirror test are great apes, a single Asiatic elephant, the Eurasian magpie, giant oceanic manta rays, dolphins, orcas, and the cleaner wrasse (fish). (NEWS THIS WEEK! Apparently mice pass the test, too. See the comments!)
Sadly, in flight most birds are completely fooled. They fly into the reflection and die.
8 January 2024
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.
If food is plentiful near humans, coatis overcome their wariness as they have done in a big way at this park in Villahermosa, Mexico.
Inevitably the brave ones cause trouble, just like raccoons.
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.
I wonder how they react when they meet each other.
“Hello there, cousin.”
(credits are in the captions)
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.
Tom Johnson filmed two peregrines harassing snowy owls at Stone Harbor, New Jersey in January 2014.
It was also a snowy weather winter. 2013-2014 was very cold with enduring snow on the ground because of the “Polar Vortex.”
This year is much warmer — so much so that yesterday’s snow melted overnight, as seen at the Pitt peregrine nestbox.
This winter we’re missing both snowies and snow.
(credits are in the captions)
