Mike lives in Saskatoon, Canada where beavers (Castor canadensis) are more common than they are in Pittsburgh. Mike photographed seven at once last spring.
His persistence pays off. Watch this beaver eat a tree (3 minutes).
He also documents their behavior. For instance, how long does it take a beaver to break into an unfastened tree fence? See below.
Persistence pays off! ?? Whoever wrapped this tree forgot to fasten the edges together. Spud found the seam and worked her way in, and eventually left with the yummy tree inside. #beavers#funnyanimalspic.twitter.com/tR6XHjgeXW
— Mike’s Photos and Videos of Beavers (@MDigout99) March 2, 2023
Flowering cherry, Pittsburgh, 1 March 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
4 March 2023
This week the weather stayed above freezing with an extraordinary high of 72F on 1 March. The plants and trees responded by bursting into bloom and leaf. Pictured here are:
A flowering cherry tree in Shadyside, 1 March
Coltsfoot in bloom at Moraine State Park, 1 March
Hairy bittercress blooming in Shadyside, 2 March
London plane tree seed balls disintegrating (a spring thing), 27 Feb
Coltsfoot blooming, Moraine State Park, 1 March 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)Hairy bittercress blooming, 2 March 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)London plane tree seed ball disintegrating, 27 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)Honeysuckle leafing out, 2 March 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Now that the plants are waking up for spring Pittsburgh’s deer (over)population is finding more to eat. In front of Phipps’ Botany Hall I found a side-by-side example of yews, a favorite deer winter food, protected and unprotected from deer browse. One bush has no protection, the rest were wrapped in plastic fencing(*). You can already see the difference.
Deer damage comparison since 15 Dec 2022. Unprotected yew at Phipps (photo on 27 Feb 2023)
This morning we may be two weeks away from the first Pitt peregrine egg of 2023. Morela’s first egg in 2021 was March 17, last year it was March 18. But who knows? She could be early or late this year.
Yesterday the pair had three bowing sessions at the nest. The first was brief and initiated by Ecco. The second was longer and Morela stuck around to dig the scrape. The third was unusual: Morela spent the entire time on the nestbox roof while Ecco bowed below. Did you see her yell at him from the roof? Check out this photo.
When the pair is not together one of them may be on the green perch, stepping in a sideways sashay. (This sashay video repeats the steps for emphasis.)
While you watch the falconcam get some practice identifying the birds with the two-photo slideshow at top. Notice that Ecco is small, has brighter-white and darker-gray feathers (more contrast), and has bright orange skin on this face and legs. Morela’s feathers are duller with less contrast, she’s bigger, and she has a peachy chest.
It’s spring and our local pigeons (Columba livia) are prancing in courtship. The males bow and coo to their chosen mates and accompany their ladies in flight. When their courtship is successful the males clap their wings.
You can hear cooing and wing clapping in this audio clip …
While traveling in Ecuador last month I saw balsa trees growing in the wild and learned that Ecuador supplies 95% of the world’s commercial balsa wood. The driving force behind these exports is an environmental paradox.
Balsa (Ochroma pyramidale) is a pioneer tree of tropical forest clearings, native to Central and South America. It is so fast growing that it can grow 6-9 feet a year and reach full height of about 100 feet in only 10-15 years. The trees are short-lived, lasting only 30-40 years.
Inside the living wood the cells are large, thin-walled and full of water so that the tree stands upright. When cut and kiln dried the wood is very lightweight and sturdy.
In the wild balsa trees are widely spaced at about one tree per acre (2-3/hectare) but to meet commercial demand balsa is grown in plantations containing 400 trees/acre (1000/hectare). Plantation trees are cut at 6-10 years old because much of the wood in older trees — the core and outer layers — is commercially useless.
Ecuadorans made ocean-going rafts of balsa logs long before the Spanish arrived in the 1500s and it is still used for rafts today. (Balsa is the Spanish word for raft.)
But none of these uses are the driving force behind increased Ecuadoran balsa exports.
Balsa wood is a component in wind turbine blades. According to GE which manufactures wind turbine blades at Castellon, “Workers make the blades from fiberglass fabric and balsa wood. Then, the blade is covered with an airtight foil and the team installs a network of tubes that pumps in and distributes the resin that will hold it together.”
Plantations provide 60% of Ecuador’s balsa wood but the remaining 40% is coming from wild trees in the rainforest. Using satellite images and on-the-ground followup Mongabay and Global Forest Watch have documented deforestation in Ecuador, especially east of the Andes in the Amazon watershed. According to Mongabay:
The Pastaza River Basin is one of the areas most affected by the balsa industry. There, the Pastaza, Bobonaza, Curaray, Villano, Copataza and other rivers are used as logging access routes, with satellite imagery showing their banks increasingly pockmarked by deforestation. Sources tell Mongabay Latam that the logging has been so intense that balsa has been completely removed from some areas.
…[And now] loggers are starting to harvest other timber species in areas that have been denuded of balsa.
“The same loggers and traders that one year ago arrived from [the cities of] Quevedo, Esmeraldas or Guayaquil are now arriving to look at what else is there,” Páez said.
“There is an ongoing process of deforestation of valuable tree species in Indigenous territories” with no monitoring by the authorities, she added.
The deforestation shows up as pink dots in Global Forest Watch’s map, below left. Are these places where birders go? The eBird map of Ecuador hotspots at right is red at sites where birders reported more than 500 species. There seems to be overlap south and east of Quito.
NOTE about the eBird map: eBird maps show where birders have found birds and reported them on eBird. The blank spots on the Ecuador map do not indicate an absence of birds but instead an absence of birders or an absence of Internet access.
(photo and map credits are in each caption; click on the captions to see the originals)
Last month the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture added two more landscape plants to the list of Pennsylvania Noxious Weeds: Winged burning bush (Euonymus alatus) and privet hedge (Ligustrum spp.). They jumped the queue into Class B Noxious Weeds because they are widely established in the wild with no hope of getting rid of them.
Native to China, Japan and Korea winged burning bush is a very popular landscaping plant that is so good at growing in dense shade that it invaded Pennsylvania’s woods. You’ve seen it in your neighborhood in October when the leaves turn bright red or magenta.
Right now it is leafless but you can recognize it by the flanges or “wings” on the stems. Here’s what it looks like in summer with opposite leaves on the stem.
By January 2025 it will be illegal to sell winged burning bush in PA nurseries and garden centers. Meanwhile you’re encouraged to replace it with native species, listed here.
Almost everyone knows what a privet hedge is. Privet is the hedge that makes you buy hedge clippers and use them frequently.
Last month the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture declared four species of privet noxious in PA: border privet (Ligustrum obtusifolium), common privet (L. vulgare), Japanese privet (L. japonicum), and Chinese privet (L. sinense). But no Ligustrum is native to the U.S. so if you see privet it’s an alien.
Privet’s ability to bounce back from cutting and regenerate from its roots make it great for borders but tenacious in the wild. I remember how hard it was to get rid of it from the border of my yard. It kept coming back until I dug up the roots.
Privet in the wild is not orderly, not tame at all.
Just as for winged burning bush, privet will be banned from sale at PA nurseries and garden centers in January 2025. Meanwhile, save yourself time with the hedge trimmers. Dig up those privet roots and plant a native shrub. Substitutes listed here.
(photos from Bugwood.org credited in the captions; click on the captions to see the originals)
Blue jay at Frick Park, January 2023 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
27 February 2023
Spring is coming and blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) are talking about it. In addition to their typical “Jeer!” calls, they now make odd sounds that you might not recognize.
Here are two courtship season sounds, Pumphandle and Rattle, followed by an everyday “Jeer!” (You’ll also hear a crow, white-breasted nuthatch and others in this sound bite.)
Blue jays bob up and down when they make the Pumphandle sound and, according to the Stokes Guide, it “may be directed at other males in a courtship group or a predator.” When it’s directed at a predator it’s a low intensity comment as if to say, “I see you, Hawk, but you’re not threatening yet.”
Rattle calls are made only by females! Vassar’s website says, they’re “a series of rapid clicks that often have one sharp click at the beginning and end of the call, often emitted within a flock, as alert calls, or when another jay intrudes on a pair’s space.”
Seeing is believing. Watch the spring calls and sounds of blue jays in two videos by Lesley The Bird Nerd.
If you heard these sounds without seeing the bird making them, would you think it was a blue jay?
If, like me, you live far from the ocean you may never have seen breaking waves glow blue at night. This bioluminescence is caused by single-celled organisms floating in ocean surface water whose defense mechanism creates blue light when they feel threatened.
Bioluminescence is relatively rare on land (think fireflies and fungi) but is common in the ocean where 76% of the organisms can create their own light through a chemical reaction between oxygen and the enzyme luciferase. The color is predominantly blue, the wavelength that travels furthest in water, and is a useful adaptation in the deep where sunlight cannot penetrate below 200 feet.
The glowing blue waves pictured above are created by dense populations of marine plankton called dinoflagellates. During the day they color the water red — a “red tide.”
Some are toxic but in San Diego in 2011 the organism was identified as harmless Lingulodinium polyedrum so it was safe to swim. ( Lingulodinium polyedrum might be top center below.)
Dinoflagellates automatically glow to warn off predators so when a wave begins to break and the jostling mimics a predator, the glowing begins. When the wave subsides the glowing stops. You can see the red tide of dinoflagellates in front of the blue wave below.
Red tides happen fairly frequently in San Diego, though not every year, and they tend to be benign. (They are generally NOT benign in Florida!) Learn more about the 2011 bioluminescence in this video:
Woodland crocus or Tommasini’s croscus, 21 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
25 February 2023
For seven days this week the temperature stayed above freezing and hit 71 degrees F on Thursday. At 26 degrees above normal, flowers opened on plants and trees.
My favorites were the early crocuses. Native to Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania and the former Yugoslavia, these woodland crocuses (Crocus tommasinianus) are often seen in gardens but someone in my neighborhood planted them in a grassy front yard. Because the flowers bloom before the grass grows they are in no danger of being mowed.
Tomasini’s crocuses blooming in the grass, Neville Ave, 21 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
On Pitt’s campus Cornelian cherry trees (Cornus mas) produced yellow flowers.
Flowers of Cornelian Cherry, 20 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Red maples (Acer rubrum) bloomed next to Carnegie Museum …
Red maple flowers near Carnegie Museum, 20 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
… and at Frick Park the maple branches looked thick with tiny flowers, including yellowish pollen-bearing ones.
Maple trees against a blue sky. Branches look thick with small flowers and pollen anthers, Frick Park, 23 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
This week, tiny leaves opened on jetbead (Rhodotypos scandens) and a few honeysuckle bushes. Unfortunately invasive plants are first to leaf out.
New leaves opening on jetbead, Frick Park, 23 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
The coming week will be like a wet blanket: above freezing, gusty wind, lots of rain.
In the brief moment I watched the live stream, two rufous-tailed hummingbirds (Amazilia tzacatl) visited the feeders and chased each other. Notice the orange beak, green body and rufous tail. We saw them at Mindo, photo below by P. B. Child.
Rufous-tailed hummingbird, Feb 2023 (photo by P. B. Child)
