Red nymph stage of the spotted lanternfly, Pittsburgh, 13 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
14 July 2023
Back in the ‘Burgh from our trip to Cape Cod, the first thing I noticed in my neighborhood was a troop of red nymph spotted lanternflies crawling on walls and sidewalks near an ailanthus tree — their host tree, a.k.a Tree of Heaven.
Red nymphs are the fourth and final instar in spotted lanternfly development.
And then it rained in central and eastern PA and the Drought Condition map changed. Most of the state is now in the green (good) or yellow zone. Except for low groundwater in 14 of our 67 counties, the drought appears to be short term because a good rain can clear it up. See the Before and After, July 9 and 11, in this slideshow.
Meanwhile, Arizona is not in a drought right now but it’s a desert, its water supply is limited, and it suffered a long term drought for many years. Water allocation has to be planned in Arizona so they won’t run out. This prompted Phoenix put the brakes on development last month in places that rely on ground water.
Arizona will not approve new housing construction on the fast-growing edges of metro Phoenix that rely on groundwater thanks to years of overuse and a multi-decade drought that is sapping its water supply. …
Officials said developers could still build in the affected areas but would need to find alternative water sources to do so ā such as surface or recycled water.
Driving the stateās decision was a projection that showed that over the next 100 years, demand in metro Phoenix for almost 4.9 million acre-feet of groundwater would be unmet without further action, Hobbs said. An acre-foot of water is roughly enough for two to three U.S. households per year. …
Hobbs added that there are 80,000 unbuilt homes that will be able to move forward because they already have assured water supply certificates within the Phoenix Active Management Area, a designation used for regulating groundwater.
Back in the 1990s I had a friend in the City of Phoenix’s economic development department who was proud to predict that, based on the city’s projected level of development, they had 75 years of water. In other words, they were OK until approximately 2070. My thought at the time was “Only 75 years?? Then what??”
Now we know. It took only 30 years to put the brakes on.
p.s. Phoenix, in Maricopa County, is one of the fastest growing areas of the U.S.; Maricopa grew 20.55% since 2010. Being from Pittsburgh, where Allegheny County grew 2.89% in the same time period, I marveled at the notion of 80,000 unbuilt homes.
(photo and map credits are in the captions, click on the links to see the originals)
If you attend a summer outdoor wedding and they supply bug repellent at the door, take the hint! The bugs will be bad and you’ll wish you’d used that bug spray.
At home in western Pennsylvania I know how our mosquitoes behave. A dab of bug repellent cream on each hotspot is enough to keep them at bay, even in dress up clothes at a wedding. We don’t have no-see-ums so I was totally unprepared for what happened at dusk on Cape Cod.
In dress up clothes and sandals I enjoyed the party and didn’t notice that I was bug bait until it was too late. I had never experienced biting gnats so when they flew around my head I just shooed them away. Hah! They bit my scalp, my arms and legs, my neck. I didn’t feel them biting me.
About an hour later the bites started itching. Aaarrg!
Evidence of biting gnats, July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Biting gnats? Lesson learned. At last night’s family picnic — with no bug repellent available — I wore hiking clothes and my rain jacket with the hood over my head. Yes, I looked odd but I was only bitten once — on my hand.
I can hardly wait for the itching to stop.
(credits are in the photo captions, click on the links to see the originals)
This week at Cape Cod I learned how to avoid a biting fly I never see in Pittsburgh.
Greenhead horse-flies(Tabanus sp.) inhabit the salt marshes of North America’s Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to Florida. For most of their lives they ignore humans, but during egg-laying season the females need a blood meal to produce their second sets of eggs. When they fly off the marsh in search of something to bite, human skin is very tempting. Ouch! It hurts immediately and raises a welt.
Greenheads are so annoying in July and August that the Cape Cod Greenhead Control Program sets up traps to reduce their numbers. Before I went birding at Water Street Marsh one of the gatekeepers at Seagull Beach told me “Don’t go near the blue boxes.”
Greenhead fly trap at Water Street Marsh, Yarmouth, MA, 7 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
The blue boxes trap only the female greenheads that are looking for a blood meal. Since the females search for mammals by smelling their breath, the traps are baited with artificial ox-breath, octenol, and are painted blue because it’s the bugs’ favorite color. According to Cape Cod Greenhead Control, up to 30,000 flies are found in each trap at the end of the summer.
… The Audubon Society predicts that three-quarters of the bald eaglesā current summer range will become unsuitable for the birds in about 60 years.
āA lot of their breeding is going to shift completely into Canada and Alaska. So the lower 48 is looking less ideal for breeding conditions for the species,ā said Brooke Bateman, senior scientist at the National Audubon Society.
At +1.5Ā°C — in the next five+ years — the biggest decrease will be in a swath of the Southeast and Lower Mississippi Valley. This screenshot map of bald eagle climate vulnerability is tiny on purpose so that you’ll view it on the Audubon website. Click here, then scroll down to see the maps for winter/summer.
A global temperature rise of +3.0Ā°C will reduce bald eagle nests in a huge swath of the U.S. from Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina westward to Nebraska and Arkansas. This is unhappy news for Pittsburgh where red indicates a 15% loss of bald eagle nests under the +3.0Ā°C scenario. [Again, view this map on the Audubon website. Click here, then scroll down to see the maps for winter/summer.]
Sadly, climate change will prompt our national bird to move away from home.
Read more about the Audubon climate change report at Yale Climate Connections. See the affect of climate change on the bald eagle’s range in the Audubon Field Guide:
Beaded water on a bug-eaten leaf, Frick Park, 4 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
8 July 2023
This week on Fourth of July morning, the birds were pretty good at Frick Park but the flowers, insects and an amazing mushroom were even better.
Humidity beaded the edge of a leaf while a great spangled fritillary* (Speyeria cybele) fed on butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). (* see the comments. This might be a different fritillary than what I wrote.)
Great spangled fritillary, Frick Park, 4 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
A spider hid among the wingstem leaves.
Spider hiding on wingstem, Frick Park, 4 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
A Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) had woven itself through a chainlink fence. Despite its invasive nature, American goldfinches love its seeds.
Canada thistle weaves through a chainlink fence, Frick Park, 4 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
This mushroom certainly caught our attention along the Nine Mile Run Trail. I think it’s a wood ear mushroom, Auricularia species, whose “ears” look like they are made of jelly.
Wood ear fungi, Auricularia species, Frick Park, 4 July 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
If you know what mushroom this is — or if I’ve misidentified anything — please leave a comment with the answer.
1. Piping plover chicks must feed themselves from birth.
2. Once they hatch, chicks donāt have a home base or nest.
3. Both parents fiercely protect them but they must have undeterred access to the waterās edge to feed.
4. If they donāt, they will die.
5. Few plover chicks live long enough to fly.
6. Once they are able to fly – at about 1 month – they are over a significant hurdle but still face many threats.
7. Piping plovers are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. They are also protected under New York State law as a NYS endangered species.
8. There are fewer piping plovers than polar bears on earth.
9. Multiple states including NY, NJ, MA, ME, IL, temporarily close beaches where plover chicks are present. This saves their young fragile lives.
10. As few as 6,000 piping plovers are left on the planet. A little inconvenience for us – for our day at the beach – can save their young lives. This is not a hard predicament. Letās do it.
Their wild turkey population study continues this year with PGC asking folks to count and report wild turkeys in PA from July 1 through August 31. Use this link to make your report https://pgcdatacollection.pa.gov/TurkeyBroodSurvey.
p.s. Wild turkeys have declined a lot in my patch with a complete absence of wild turkeys in Schenley Park for the past two years. I used to see as many as 8.
Heat waves, wildfire smoke and now plagues of insects have made the news in recent weeks.
Last month Elko, Nevada had a plague of Mormon crickets (Anabrus simplex), a bug whose local populations boom and bust on a 4-6 year cycle. Though these 3-inch long katydids cannot fly, thousands upon thousands of walking and hopping crickets is a sight to behold and avoid.
Thousands of Mormon crickets have taken over the town of Elko, Nevada, as these flightless, grasshopper-like creatures come out of their dormant period and into their migratory phase pic.twitter.com/6ZxD7yoPIr
Fortunately Mormon crickets live only in the American West, but a different plague of insects awaited New Yorkers after the Canadian wildfire smoke left town.
Three weeks after choking smoke from Canadian wildfires enveloped the city, an infestation of tiny flying bugs is the latest signal that some New Yorkers are interpreting as the portent of end times.
Since Wednesday [28 June 2023], New Yorkers running, biking, walking or on subways, have reported tiny insects, moving in cloud-like swarms, around parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, in some cases making it hard to breathe. …
David Grimaldi, a curator and entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History, told The City that the bugs getting caught in peoples hair are in fact aphids that are usually wingless but can develop into a winged form when populations become crowded and food quality suffers.
