Schenley Outing Rescheduled to Sunday 28 May (Memorial Day weekend) due to conflict with Komen More Than Pink Walk
Mayapple in bloom, 17 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Schenley Park, 28 May 2023, 8:30a
Meet me at the Schenley Park Visitors Center (40.4383304,-79.9464765) on Sunday 28 May (the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend) for a bird and nature walk , 8:30am to 10:30am. Migration will be winding down but nesting birds will be in full swing including scarlet tanagers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, red-winged blackbirds and many robins.
As always, dress for the weather and wear comfortable walking shoes. Bring binoculars and field guides if you have them.
If the birding is good we’ll have the option to continue until 11:00a.
Phipps BioBlitz Bird Walk in Schenley Park, 4 June 2023, 8:30a
Phipps BioBlitz is an annual event for families, students, local scientists and naturalists in which we conduct a biological survey of the plants and animals in Schenley Park. There will be booths on the Phipps lawn displaying the wonders of local nature plus walks in the park including my bird walk at 8:30am-10:30am. The event is free. No registration required. Read all about Phipps BioBlitz Day here.
Meet me on the Phipps lawn (directions here) Sunday 4 June, 8:30a-10:30a, after you check in at the Events Desk. Parking is Free on Sundays!
For the eighth consecutive year, falcon father Jamie and mother Moxie squawked loudly and angrily Monday as their baby chicks that hatched atop Indiana Michigan Power Center (IMPC) were briefly removed from their nest to receive identification bands.
The three male chicks were named Bolt, Unity and Artemis, and the one female was named Carla.
… We used the opportunity to invite I&M employees to select the names – and they submitted more than 650 names for consideration.
… [The name] Carla is in recognition of one of I&M’s respected leaders, who is retiring this summer after more than 30 years with the company.
Who is Carla’s namesake? I contacted Tracy Warner in Media Relations at Indiana Michigan Power, a subsidiary of AEP, and he confirmed that Carla the Falcon was named for Carla E. Simpson who retired in the summer of 2020.
Carla Simpson started as a clerk/cashier in 1988 and by the time she retired was a director of the company and listed in the Annual Report. Interviewed in 2017 for the AEP Retirees newsletter, Carla Simpson said something that really resonates with me.
Q (asked of Carla E. Simpson): What is the biggest challenge you have faced and overcome in your career at AEP?
A: The biggest challenge I have faced as a woman is not being heard at times. Sometimes I can make a suggestion or statement and it is overlooked, but another person may make the same suggestion and be heard. This is a challenge that I have not yet overcome but I am working on it. It sometimes requires me to restate what I said or ask for clarity as to how the other person’s suggestion or statement is different from mine.
West End Bridge peregrine viewing (Google map marked up by Jeff Cieslak)
The female was banded and by 4 May Jeff finally got a shot of her bands pictured below. Jeff wrote, “This kinda looks like S/01 Black/Blue? Could be green. …. [The bird] flew off and dropped a feather into the river, P5 left, I think, and that pretty much confirms that it’s the female.”
Carla at the West End Bridge, Pittsburgh, PA, 4 May 2023 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
I can understand why Carla left the West End Bridge for the Cathedral of Learning. In 2020 she hatched on a 27-story building, the Indiana Michigan Power Center.
She is now preparing for a long stay on a 40-story building, the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, as seen from Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park below.
Cathedral of Learning, Univ of Pittsburgh, as seen from Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
You can watch Carla and her future mate, Ecco, on the National Aviary Falconcam at the Cathedral of Learning. It is probably too late in the season to start nesting so they won’t be on camera frequently. However Carla and Ecco are getting to know each other and that may involve bowing at the nest. Wait and see.
In Sunday’s update I explained that Morela was very ill when she disappeared last Friday and said: “If Morela is gone a new female will come to the Cathedral of Learning to be Ecco’s mate.” Well, that didn’t take long! A new female peregrine showed up at 2:00pm and displayed her bands. I already know where she came from.
Yesterday was so warm and sunny that Ecco sunbathed for 90 minutes at midday. Then at 2:00pm a new female peregrine showed up and sunbathed for half an hour. (See slideshow at end.)
Two weeks ago I wrote that there would be no peregrine eggs this year at the Cathedral of Learning because Morela was unable to lay any. She crouched and strained but appeared to be egg bound.
Since then Morela has had days when she looks very ill, then seems to recover a little, then looks ill again. Though she stopped standing over the scrape as shown above, she has not returned to her formerly energetic self. Her bleary eyes indicate she feels unwell.
He does what he can by bringing her food which he prepares more carefully than usual, as if he’s making it easy to eat. Unfortunately it is not enough.
On the morning of 7 May Morela felt bad enough that she left the nest for 36 hours. That day I found her facing the wall in the 38th floor southeast cache area.
She returned to the nest at 5:34pm on 8 May and seemed slightly better but in the next few days her health declined. In this snapshot she is leaning to the side, something she never did when healthy.
During a difficult night on May 11-12 Morela leaned a lot and may have lost her balance a couple of times. On Friday 12 May at 5:51am she left the nest and has not been seen since.
Her long absence and ill health indicate we probably won’t see her again.
Life goes on in the peregrine world. If Morela is gone a new female will come to the Cathedral of Learning to be Ecco’s mate. This year it’s too late to raise a family but if all goes well there will be peregrine chicks next year.
Hoping for happier times ahead.
UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long! A new, banded FEMALE peregrine came to the nestboxon 14 May at 2:27 PM.
Here she is at the nest this afternoon. I thought this was Morela but when I looked at the image I can see that SHE’S BANDED! (Morela was unbanded.)
A flying insect on my 6th floor window, 4 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
13 May 2023
I’ve known for years that chimney swifts eat flying bugs as they zip around above us but I didn’t think about the variety of insects they encounter. Now that I live in a high-rise flying insects sometimes perch outside my window. This elegant bit of “chimney swift food” visited my window more than a week ago.
This week I spent four days birding at Magee Marsh, Ohio on Lake Erie’s shore where I saw 113 species including 20 species of warblers. See my eBird trip report here.
The warblers were on time but the plants were late compared to Pittsburgh. Places near the lake have a later growing season because water temperature changes more slowly than land and influences local weather. Instead of deep green leaves, the trees had tiny leaves and the oaks were still flowering.
Star-flowered lily-of-the-valley , Pearson Metropark, 9 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)Wild ginger, Pearson Metropark, 9 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
This blooming plant was new to me: American black currant (Ribes americanum)
American black currant, Pearson Metropark, 9 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
On the subject of green things, last weekend in Schenley Park this small cascade pond on Phipps Run was too green with clumpy algae. Algae is unusual for Phipps Run. Something went wrong … but what?
Phipps Run cascade pond with rampant algae, Schenley Park, 7 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
From Earth, Saturn is tiny and the Moon is large. You can see the huge size difference in Paul Byrne’s (@ThePlanetaryGuy) video of Saturn rising behind the Moon.
Every once in a while, if you time it just right, you can see Saturn rise from behind the Moon. pic.twitter.com/gnRAVQSgyu
We’ve all experienced a moment when a smell suddenly brings back memories. A whiff of perfume, a hint of cinnamon and clove, even the smell of furniture polish can send us back in time with vivid detail.
The reason is that our olfactory bulb which processes smells is physically connected to the two places in our brain that process emotion and memory, the amygdala and hippocampus. The link makes a lot of sense in animals that use pheromones for sexual attraction.
This strange entanglement of emotions and scents may actually have a simple evolutionary explanation. The amygdala evolved from an area of the brain that was originally dedicated to detecting chemicals, Herz said. “Emotions tell us about approaching things and avoiding things, and that’s exactly what the sense of smell does too,” she said. “So, they’re both very intimately connected to our survival.” In fact, the way we use emotions to understand and respond to the world resembles how animals use their sense of smell.
Which brings me to this plant I found blooming at Hays Woods in late April. The scent of cypress spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias) is so unique that it takes me back to a particular place and time and the happiness of seeing beautiful birds at Presque Isle State Park in early May.
Cypress spurge, Hays Woods, Pittsburgh, 24 April 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
On Throw Back Thursday here’s why cypress spurge reminds me of migrating warblers:
As humans we recognize each other by face, body shape and the way a person walks, but it’s rare that we can recognize individual birds. Birds move too fast to examine their faces and in most cases we don’t know what to look for. However if you can “hold them still” in photographs it’s possible to see patterns. This is especially true of your backyard birds that can be photographed over and over.
Blue jays all look the same … but not really. Their facial markings can be unique enough to tell them apart in photos. Lesley The Bird Nerd in Ontario, Canada has photographed her local blue jays for many years and learned to tell who’s who by face. Check out her 6.5 minute video below.
Orchard oriole singing at Frick Park, 26 April 2023 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
9 May 2023
This year the orchard orioles, smallest of the blackbirds (Icterids), returned to Pittsburgh in late April. We knew they were back when we heard this male singing near Frick Park’s Nine Mile Run boardwalk on 26 April. Ten days later we returned to the boardwalk and heard him again but it was a different bird — an immature male — and we remembered this: You can’t assume the singing bird is an adult male. In fact in the spring all the orchard orioles sing.
Orchard orioles (Icterus spurius) spend most of their lives in Central and South America and only a short time on their breeding grounds in southwestern PA from late April to August/September.
Adult males start singing in Central America before they head north. When they get here they sing during the nesting season and continue while feeding young. Then they fall silent. May is the best time to hear them.
Adult male voices are wiry and rapid with no pattern to the song. Here are two examples:
Immature male orchard oriole (photo by Donna Foyle)
One-year-old males look different than adults and to a discerning listener — the female orchard oriole — they also sound different. Singing is a learning process and these yellow-green guys with black faces aren’t accomplished songsters yet. Here are two examples of immature male songs.
Females sing as well. Birds of the World explains: “Most tropical icterids have a female song and, ancestrally, the whole family is thought to have this behavior. Female Orchard Orioles sing throughout the breeding period with songs that are structurally distinct from those of males. … Their songs are statistically different in 5 of 8 acoustic variables (full song duration, syllable duration, maximum frequency, bandwidth and percent pause), and are easily distinguished by ear in the field.”
Click on the screenshot of the female below to watch and hear her sing.
(photos by Charity Kheshgi and Donna Foyle, range map from eBird, female oriole screenshot from Macaulay Library; click on the caption links for further details)
Squirrel outside my 6th floor window, 4 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
8 May 2023
I live on the 6th floor of a high rise so I was startled to glance out the kitchen window last Thursday and see the back end of a squirrel. I know squirrels can climb but this one had to scale a brick wall, climbing more than 60 feet without the help of anything. No exterior fire escapes. No nearby trees. Nothing but bricks and window ledges.
The wall the squirrel had to climb, 5 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
When I saw him on my windowsill he was looking in the direction of a bird feeder more than 100 feet away on the building next door. City squirrels walk wires to cross the street so maybe he thought he’d find a wire connecting the buildings. No such thing.
He contemplated his exit. “How did I get here? How do I get back?”
Squirrel contemplates getting down from here, 4 May 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
He must have figured it out. He was gone the next time I looked.
