Each year the National Aviary falconcam at the Cathedral of Learning runs from February through July to cover the peregrine breeding season. Streaming ended on 31 July but just the day before, on 30 July, Ecco and Carla bowed for a long time at the nest and Carla occasionally ate some gravel. (*more information on gravel below)
The entire bowing session lasted 8 minutes but they paused a lot so I sped up the video to double-time. At 3 minutes in, it looks as if Carla has left but she’s merely off camera. As she comes close again Ecco resumes e-chupping and bowing. Finally Carla flies away and Ecco stands up straight to watch her leave.
Though the bowing looks like courtship they won’t be starting a family anytime soon. Ecco and Carla live at the Cathedral of Learning all year long and bow to strengthen their pair bond, even in July.
The pair is generally less active in the summer but they’ll perk up when fall migration begins in earnest as they watch birds flying south over Oakland.
Except for a few scientific probes, we humans know almost nothing about the deep sea, yet remote as it is it contains human evidence. Even in the deepest sea a plastic bag floats by.
— Deep Sea Research Centre (@deepseauwa) July 3, 2023
Meanwhile, because the sea floor has no owner, mining companies are chomping at the bit to extract minerals from the deep sea in the absence of any rules to protect it. The companies claim the minerals to be used in electronics would mitigate climate change (really?) but what will the mining damage?
The three owls pictured here live in Pittsburgh’s city parks but are hard to find in August. The best time of year to see a great-horned owl, above, is in late winter or early spring. Steve Gosser photographed this one in Frick Park in April 2019.
Though barred owls have nested successfully in Frick Park, I didn’t see any this year. In July 2022 two youngsters ventured further from their parents at dusk, photographed by Charity Kheshgi.
Young barred owls, Frick Park, July 2022 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
This roost on the main trail in Schenley Park was the best place to find an eastern screech-owl in winter, but it has not been used for several years. Nowadays listen for angry songbirds to tell you about the owls. They told me where to find a young eastern screech-owl in early June.
Eastern screech-owl, Schenley Park, March 2016 (photo by Benjamin Haake)
Last week I mentioned the Eurasian eagle-owl, Flaco, who lives in Central Park, NYC.
Happy 6th month of freedom today to Flaco, the Central Park Eurasian eagle-owl. When I saw him hunt for possibly the first time, I was surprised and glad. He hunts with ease now and I am happy for his continued success and wellbeing! Photo taken recently after midnight.#birdcpppic.twitter.com/RNirtnBjeG
The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is the largest tiger subspecies and one of the most endangered animals on the planet. It nearly went extinct in the 1940s due to habitat loss and poaching, but conservation efforts in Russia allowed the population to increase to 400-500 in the wild. This map shows how their range contracted from the 1800s to the 2010s.
Saving the tigers requires knowing more about them but there are so few in the wild and they are so spread out that studying them would be too intrusive.
Instead a recent study of the dispositions of tigers interviewed the caretakers of 248 semi-wild tigers living in two large wildlife sanctuaries in northeastern China. The goal was to learn the the tigers’ personality traits, the traits that work well and those that don’t.
The research team invited more than 50 feeders and veterinarians to fill out questionnaires with lists of 67 to 70 adjectives that described tiger personality traits for each cat in their care. These words ranged from “savage” and “imposing” to “dignified” and “friendly.” The researchers designed the questionnaires to mimic human personality tests.
… Two distinct personality types emerged that accounted for nearly 40% of the tigers’ behaviors. Tigers that scored higher on words such as confident, competitive, and ambitious fell under what the researchers labeled as the “majesty” mindset. Those that exhibited traits such as obedience, tolerance, and gentleness were grouped together under the “steadiness” mindset. Together, these two personalities explained 38% of the behavioral differences displayed by the tigers in the study.
The study then matched the personality ratings of the individual cats to their success in life. “Based on their weights and eating habits, the tigers with majesty mindsets were generally healthier than those with steadiness personalities. They hunted more, mated more often, had more breeding success and appeared to have a higher social status than the steadiness tigers.” — Science Magazine
So for most of the tigers it comes down to Majesty …
Compared to most other states Texas has generous (some say “lax”) wildlife-as-pets laws. Pet tigers are supposed to be registered in Texas and the owner must carry $100,000 in liability insurance but the number of registered tigers is lower than the actual number that live in the state.
For instance, take the Bengal tiger who roamed the streets of West Houston in May 2021. Houston is one of the few places in Texas where pet tigers are illegal so of course the 9-month-old tiger, named India, was not registered. The tiger caused a stir after he jumped out of his enclosure and walked around the neighborhood. The owner bundled him into an SUV and drove away, evading police (mistake! The owner was out on bond in a murder case). Eventually the wife turned over the tiger to police and it was given safe haven at the Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch where there are other tigers. Read all about it in the Houston Chronicle: Everything we know about the tiger seen roaming a west Houston neighborhood.
Nectar ferments, too, which prompted UC Berkeley biologist Robert Dudley to wonder how hummingbirds react to it. Do they like it or avoid it? Do hummingbirds get drunk?
Dudley tasked several undergraduate students with experimenting on the hummers visiting the feeder outside his office window to find out whether alcohol in sugar water was a turn-off or a turn-on. All three of the test subjects were male Anna’s hummingbirds (Calypte anna), year-round residents of the Bay Area.
They found that hummingbirds happily sip from sugar water with up to 1% alcohol by volume, finding it just as attractive as plain sugar water, but they sip only half as much when the sugar water contains 2% alcohol. …
“They burn the alcohol and metabolize it so quickly. Likewise with the sugars. So they’re probably not seeing any real effect. They’re not getting drunk,” he added.
Hummingbirds regulate their alcoholic intake. This stupefied Bohemian waxwing, reeling from too much fermented fruit, needs to have a conversation with them.
Horse nettle at Frick Park, 30 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
31 July 2023
Yesterday morning’s walk at Frick Park had great weather, lots of participants and good birds.
Members of the Frick Park outing on 30 July 2023 (photo by Joe Fedor who held my phone-camera)
Early in the walk we encountered horsenettle (Solanum carolinense), pictured above, whose flowers are similar to those of its relatives in the Solanaceae or Nightshade family including tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant (called aubergine in the UK). Though it’s not a nettle, its common name refers to the thorns on its leaves. Did you know the leaves smell like potatoes when crushed? Thorns prevent me from trying this.(*)
Best Birds were a very cooperative yellow billed cuckoo and an elusive green heron. The cuckoo posed for us, the green heron zoomed away. Later the heron zoomed in and landed above us near a second green heron. Two!
In the Nine Mile Run valley I marveled at this confluence of a muddy tributary with the main stem of Nine Mile Run. This, in microcosm, is like the confluence of the clear-running Allegheny with the muddy Monongahela River at The Point.
Main stem of Nine Mile Run (clear) is joined by a tributary, 30 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Fortunately all the sharks weren’t there at the same time. As lead author Megan Winton of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC) explains, great white sharks are highly migratory. Their population peaks on the Cape from July to November when the water is warm, as shown in this screenshot from AWSC’s logbook for 2022. Individual sharks spend a few hours or a few weeks in the area. (Click here to see AWSC’s shark data and download their shark app.)
The sharks are attracted to the Cape by the abundance seals, one of their favorite foods. A Google Haul Out survey of southeastern Massachusetts estimated maximum counts of gray seals at 30,000 to 50,000 animals in 2012 to 2015. Harbor seals arrive in the fall and add to the seal population. No wonder sharks show up. Gray seals provide a lot of meat, weighing as much as 800 pounds.
During our recent trip to Cape Cod I saw lots of seals at Chatham Fish Pier. Several swam by the fishing boats but the vast majority were hauled out on a sand bar across the harbor. See that lumpy line of gray blobs? Those are gray seals.
Gray seals line the edge of the sand bar across from Chatham Fish Pier on Cape Cod, 12 July 2023 (photo by Richard St. John)Gray seals line the edge of the sand bar across from Chatham Fish Pier on Cape Cod, 12 July 2023 (photo by Richard St. John)
While on the Cape I didn’t see any sharks but I did see a No Swimming shark sign at Race Point. I was looking for birds and, as it turns out, diving seabirds give the hint that a shark may be nearby. Both feed on schools of fish, the birds from above, the sharks from below.
The abundance of sharks and seals in Cape Cod’s waters is an environmental success story. Gray seals were almost extinct in U.S. waters by the mid 20th century because of bounty hunting in Maine and Massachusetts from the late 1800s to 1962. The seal population began to recover, slowly, when the bounties ended. Sharks made a comeback because of the seals.
This thimbleweed still has petals, Jennings, 21 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)Dense blazing star, Jennings, 21 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)Yarrow, Jennings, 21 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
This photo of rattlesnake plantain shows the flower buds. Click here or on the photo to see the entire plant with basal leaves.
Rattlesnake plantain in bud, Jennings, 21 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Culver’s root was in bloom at Jennings but too far from the trail for a cellphone photo. I found this one blooming on Thursday in a garden near Dippy the Dinosaur at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Do you see the bumblebee?
Culver’s root near Dippy statue, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 27 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Celebrity in Central Park, Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl, February 2023 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
28 July 2023
A selection of photos and videos this month around the web:
In February a Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco escaped from the Central Park Zoo and became a celebrity. He’s still hanging out in July.
A minute with Flaco the Eurasian Eagle-Owl in his favorite elm tree in a quiet meadow in Central Park. ? ?? ? pic.twitter.com/YJngOScMOk
— Manhattan Bird Alert (@BirdCentralPark) July 20, 2023
In Florida, swallow-tailed kites are preparing to migrate.
Our land stewardship team spotted this flock of Swallow-tailed Kites staging for #Migration in the northern part of the Sanctuary! They're getting ready to head to wintering grounds in South America. See their flight path here: https://t.co/gM31TOrnPXpic.twitter.com/lCCvBcQNf9
— Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary (@CorkscrewSwamp) July 26, 2023
In Europe, migration has already begun across the Strait of Gibraltar.
