29 December 2023
Yesterday I wrote about seeing stars in the sky. Today we’ll see stars in the sea in this video at Vaadhoo Island, Maldives.
You don’t have to travel as far as the Maldives to see bioluminescent waves but it is not a common phenomena and few places are as reliable as this one.
Read more about the Sea of Stars at VisitMaldives.com.
(credits are in the captions)
28 December 2023
We usually take for granted that even on a clear night there aren’t many stars to see. When the news reminds us to watch for an astronomical event such as the Geminid meteor shower on 13 December, we realize that most of us have to drive somewhere to find a dark sky. Even rural skies show fewer stars than a dark sky site, and Dark Sky locations are getting harder to find as light pollution proliferates.
There’s a universe above us that most of us cannot see. Learn more in this vintage article:
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.
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.
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!
26 December 2023
Take a break from the holiday bustle to watch northern birds in the snow at two live feeder cams:
You’ll see chickadees and nuthatches as well as northern specialties like evening grosbeaks and redpolls. Enjoy!
25 December 2023
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
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.
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
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.
The birds were frantic because they knew bad weather was coming. In mid afternoon it snowed.
The next morning the fruit was gone and so were the robins.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you don’t like winter, the Northern Hemisphere has the best arrangement. Our astronomical seasons from shortest to longest are:
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:
20 December 2023
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
Arborists collect the nuts, not to roast but to plant, so we’ll have more chestnuts some day.
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.
At these locations the leaves are above knee height.
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)
