Watching gulls at the Point, Pittsburgh, PA, 31 Jan 2015 (photo by Tim Vechter)
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.
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.
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.
@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.
