Start Counting! Christmas Bird Counts Coming Soon

Books & Events
screenshot from the 2022 Audubon Christmas Bird Count webpage

3 December 2022

Gloomy, windy weather has chased us indoors but there’s fun ahead in the coming weeks. Join Audubon’s 123rd annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC), Wednesday 14 December 2022 to Thursday 5 January 2023.

Date span of the 2022 Christmas Bird Count (calendar images from timeanddate.com)

During the Christmas Bird Count, volunteers count birds in more than 2,500 count circles in North America. Each circle is 15-miles in diameter and has its own compiler who coordinates the count for a single scheduled day.

Screenshot of 123rd Christmas Bird Count map from audubon.org

You can go birding outdoors or count birds at your feeder (if your home is in a count circle). No experience is necessary. The only prerequisite is that you must contact the circle compiler in advance to reserve your place.

Choose a location and date that suits you from the national map at audubon.org and follow the instructions here for singing up. (NOTE: To see the date of your chosen CBC you may have to scroll down in the little block that shows the compiler’s name.)

If you live in the Pittsburgh area you may be interested in one of these counts. Click on the map for details.

Screenshot of zoomed-in 123rd Christmas Bird Count map from audubon.org

Join the Pittsburgh Christmas Bird Count on 31 December 2022 (map below). If you’ve not yet made arrangements to participate, or you need more information, contact Brian Shema at the Audubon Society of Western PA at 412-963-6100 or bshema@aswp.org.

Pittsburgh Christmas Bird Count circle (map from audubon.org)

Sign up now! We’ll be counting soon.

p.s. Did you know … ?

  • The Christmas Bird Count is funded entirely by donations. Donate here to support the CBC.
  • The CBC extends into January because it spans 11 days before and after Christmas. The entire count period is 23 days, though I doubt any counts are scheduled on Christmas.

(photo from 2022 Audubon Christmas Bird Count webpage, maps from audubon.org; click on the captions to see the originals)

Robins On The Move

Migration, Songbirds
Robins pause in a pine, California, Feb 2019 (photo by Douglas via Flickr Creative Commons license)

2 December 2022

In mid November hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American robins (Turdus migratorius) were in the east end of Pittsburgh but left abruptly when the weather dropped below freezing on November 18th. By the 21st it was 17 degrees F and the robins were long gone.

Robins can cope with cold weather but not with frozen ground so they stay just south of the freeze line as winter approaches.

American robin, Marin County, 16 Nov 2022 (photo by Robin Agarwal via Flickr Creative Commons license)

Those that nest in Canada and Alaska may leapfrog over the local slowpokes who wait for truly awful weather.

eBird distribution maps for June-July and December-February show that robins vacate the north to populate temperate zones in winter. June-July is dark purple with robins everywhere except for the hottest southern U.S. In Dec-Feb they’re concentrated in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast including Florida.

Robins were on the move here in November. Now they’re south of us, wrapping up.

(photos by Robin Agarwal and Douglas on Flickr via Creative Commons license; click on the captions to see the originals)

Seven Years After Dorothy

Peregrines
Dorothy at the Cathedral of Learning, 5 March 2012 (photo by Pat Szczepanski)

1 December 2022

Seven years ago this week Dorothy, the peregrine matriarch at the Cathedral of Learning, permanently disappeared and was replaced by “Hope” a bird that had formerly nested at the Tarentum Bridge. (Click here to read about the changeover.)

Dorothy was the bird that got me hooked on peregrines. By December 2015 I had watched her for 14 years and was not surprised she disappeared because she was elderly and in ill health. It was hard to watch Dorothy’s decline. She had been so vibrant in her prime.

Much has changed in seven years. Dorothy’s successor was a grave disappointment but Hope’s successor, Morela, is as queenly as Dorothy herself. We are lucky to have her.

Today in a trip down memory lane here’s a video tribute to Dorothy.

A Tribute To Dorothy

The key to Dorothy’s long life may have that E2 was such a good mate.

p.s. Hope turned out to be Hopeless but that’s a story for another day.

(photo at top by Pat Szczepanski in 2012)

Panther Hollow Lake on Hold

Books & Events, Schenley Park
Panther Hollow Lake in flood with ice, 25 Feb 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)

30 November 2022

Panther Hollow Lake in Schenley Park has had problems for decades but there was hope they would be solved by an ambitious 2016 plan to rehab the lake and daylight Four Mile Run downstream. Unfortunately the plans were so ambitious that they had to be put on hold this month.

The lake’s problems are legion. It is really only the size of a pond and is filled with sediment. The shallow water cannot replenish fast enough so algae blooms in summer; sometimes fish die. Its unnatural concrete edges prohibit lakeside vegetation that could absorb water and it does not flow into any creek or river. Instead Panther Hollow Lake dumps 68 million gallons per year of clean water into a sewer pipe.

The sewer pipe is what used to be Four Mile Run plus lots of sewage. When there’s not much rain the pipe carries its contents to the water treatment plant at Alcosan.

6.2.3 M29 Four Mile Run: Green Infrastructure Concept Plan Figure 6-15 from pgh2o (markup added for 4 Mile Run)

But in a downpour the pipe is overloaded and floods the downstream neighborhood called The Run.

Combined sewer overflow flood in The Run, August 2016 (photo by Justin Macey used by permission)

In 2016 Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority’s Draft Green Infrastructure Plan (PWSA at pgh2o.com) proposed dredging the lake, removing the concrete surround, and building a new dam so the lake would be a good depth.

Concrete edge and algae among the cattails in Panther Hollow Lake, August 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)

It also proposed daylighting Four Mile Run in Junction Hollow — in other words, making it flow on the surface in daylight instead of in a pipe underground. Here’s an example of a daylighted stream in Yonkers.

EXAMPLE OF DAYLIGHTING a stream in an urban setting (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

But when the plans were submitted for approval big problems halted the project. Here’s what stood in the way, quoted from the PGH2O presentation on 14 Nov 2022 (my comments added).

  • DEP’s review proved difficult
    • DEP would not approve the dam as designed. It had to be much larger to meet current dam codes.
    • Daylighting Four Mile Run in Junction Hollow would be a long permitting nightmare because it must be put back into a (new) pipe to get under the railroad and Second Ave on its way to the Monongahela River.
  • The dam would have to be placed on railroad property and the railroad had already said no.

So PWSA updated the project to solve the biggest problem — flooding in The Run. Described in a public meeting on 14 Nov 2022, the revised project map shows no work in Schenley Park. All work will occur in The Run.

Four Mile Run Stormwater Project (from pgh2o community presentation 14 Nov 2022)

Improvements to Panther Hollow Lake are on hold again. Fortunately the flooding will be solved in The Run.

Read about the updated plan as of 14 Nov 2022 at Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority: Four Mile Run Stormwater Project. See the Community Presentation Powerpoint here.

(image credits and links to the originals are in the captions. Maps from pgh2o.com)

The Largest Living Organism is Dying of Deer

Deer, Mammals, Trees
Pando in October snow, 2021 (photo by Beth Moon via Flickr Creative Commons license)

29 November 2022

In 1976 Jerry Kemperman and Burton Barnes discovered that 106 acres of quaking aspens (Populus tremuloides) in the Fishlake National Forest of Utah were actually all the same male plant, one root with thousands of suckers that grew into trees. It came to be known as Pando — “I spread.”

Quaking aspen, Pando, in fall (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Pando weighs 6,600 tons making it the heaviest known organism on Earth and it is very old, though no one is sure whether it’s 10,000 or 80,000 or even a million years old.

Aerial image of the location of the single aspen tree, Pando (highlighted in green) at Fishlake National Forest, Utah (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

However, almost as soon as Pando was discovered researchers found that sections of it were not rejuvenating because new sprouts were being overbrowsed by deer. In that part of the U.S. the species is mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus).

Mule deer in Colorado (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

So they fenced it — twice — one fence in 2013, another in 2014.

Map of 2018 Pando study partially funded by U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Grant/Award Number: L21AC10369 (map downloaded from Wiley Online Library)

Then in 2018 Paul Rogers and Darren McAvoy of Utah State University conducted a followup study sampling Pando’s health inside and outside the deer exclosure fences and concluded that the fencing was not working.

According to September 2022 Sci.News “The unfenced areas are experiencing the most rapid aspen decline, while the fenced areas are taking their own unique courses — in effect, breaking up this unique, historically uniform, forest. … Fencing alone is encouraging single-aged regeneration in a forest that has sustained itself over the centuries by varying growth.”

“One clear lesson emerges here: we cannot independently manage wildlife and forests.”

— Sci.News, October 2018: Pando, World’s Largest Single Organism, is Shrinking

Aldo Leopold’s experience in his early career when he worked to eradicate wolves from the American West changed his perspective on trees and deer. At one point he shot an old female wolf and was there to see the green fire go out of her eyes as she died. He wrote …

I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.…

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.

— Aldo Leopold: Sand County Almanac, “Thinking Like a Mountain”

Pando’s days are numbered because new trees are not growing up to replace the old ones. This is how a forest dies.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons, map from Wiley Online; click on the captions to see the originals)

Greater and White-Fronted

Migration, Water and Shore
Greater white-fronted geese from Crossley ID Guide to Eastern Birds (image form Wikimedia Commons)

28 November 2022

Over the Thanksgiving weekend 6 greater white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons) showed up in western Pennsylvania — four in Lawrence County and four in Armstrong County.

Though they breed in the arctic around the world, the North American population stays west of the Mississippi. These geese are rare in Pennsylvania.

Range map of greater white-fronted goose embedded from allaboutbirds.org

Their “greater” and “white-fronted” adjectives don’t make much sense unless you know the species they resemble in Europe.

They are “greater” because they are larger than the lesser white-fronted goose (Anser erythropus) that occurs only in Eurasia and is now Vulnerable to extinction.

They are “white-fronted” because they have white feathers on their faces surrounding their beaks, a field mark that distinguishes them from the similar greylag goose (Anser anser), another Eurasian species.

Greater white-fronted goose (detail from the Crossley ID Guide Eastern Birds, arrow added to indicate white front)

Only a handful of greater white-fronted geese are seen in western Pennsylvania in any given year, and then only in late October through early March.

If you see a goose that resembles this one check its field marks carefully. It may be an odd domestic goose, described here:

The Odd Goose

(images from Wikimedia Commons, map embedded from allaboutbirds.org)

More or Less Drought

Climate Change, Weather & Sky
Ranking the states by average percentage of land in drought, 2000-to-March-2021 (original map from Wikimedia Commons colored by Kate St. John)

27 November 2022

The western U.S. has always been drier than the east but as climate change heats up the planet, drought has become more prevalent. NOAA’s quarterly weather outlooks now include a 3-month drought prediction along with temperature and precipitation forecasts. Some places are more likely to experience drought than others. Which states are more likely? Which are least?

The graphic above is based on Stacker’s article, States With the Worst Droughts, that ranks states by average percentage of land in drought from 2000 to March 2021. Listing the states in order, I grouped them in 10s with darkest Orange indicating the top ten drought states and darkest Green for the 10 wettest. (White = the middle 10)

  • The top state for drought is Arizona. No surprise; it’s a desert.
  • The state with the least drought is Ohio!
  • Georgia and South Carolina stand alone with a lot more drought than their neighbors. Their drought ranking is like Kansas.
  • Hawaii (dark orange) and Alaska (dark green) are at opposite extremes.
Sign at Georgia Tech during the 2008 drought (photo by Mingaling via Flickr Creative Commons license)

As climate change continues to unfold human populations will migrate from less habitable to more habitable locations. In the U.S. we can expect people to move west to northeast in the coming century — from more drought to less.

Wondering about your state’s ranking? Click here for the Stacker article.

NOAA’s 2022-23 winter weather outlook is here.

(at top, base map from Wikimedia Commons, precipitation outlook from NOAA; click on the captions to see the originals)

Late November Birds at Duck Hollow

Migration, Water and Shore
Ring-billed gull and common merganser, Duck Hollow, 23 Nov 2022 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)

26 November 2022

This week Charity Kheshgi and I saw ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis), a common merganser (Mergus merganser) and a few pied-billed grebes (Podilymbus podiceps) at Duck Hollow. All three species visit the Monongahela River in November when freshwater freezes up north.

Pied-billed grebe in silhouette, Duck Hollow, 23 Nov 2022 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)

The common merganser gave us an opportunity to mentally compare her field marks to a similar bird. Here are some tips.

Female common and red-breasted mergansers are so similar that it takes some practice to tell them apart. Charity’s photos show the common merganser’s two unique field marks:

  • A sharp demarcation between dark head versus white breast / gray back.
  • A sharply defined white under-chin.

Notice the common merganser field marks in three photos.

Common mergansers at Duck Hollow, 16 Nov 2022 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Common merganser, not showing its crest, Duck Hollow, 16 Nov 2022 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Common mergansers — unique field marks in blue (photo by Charity Kheshgi)

Female red-breasted mergansers (Mergus serrator) lack those sharp lines. The colors blend from one to the other.

Red-breasted merganser (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Note that the presence of a head crest is not a reliable difference between the two; both can display it.

So here’s a quiz: Which species is in the photo below? Are these common or red-breasted mergansers?

Which merganser is this? (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

p.s. Location, location, location! Of the two species, common mergansers are inland birds more likely in Pittsburgh in November. Red-breasted mergansers concentrate at the coasts and Great Lakes in winter.

(photos by Charity Kheshgi and red-breasted mergansers from Wikimedia Commons)

In Which Kites Become Planes and Birds

Birds of Prey, Musings & News
Box kite at International Kite Festival, India, 2013 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

25 November 2022

Kites sometimes fly with the birds. A distant raptor soars at center-bottom of the photo above. Kite + Bird.

In 1914 this kite was becoming a plane. Kite = Plane.

Colonel Granville Ryrie and a box kite, Australia, 1914 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Some kites are birds. More than two dozen species of raptors are named “kite” including the Mississippi kite (Ictinia mississippiensis) of North America and the red kite (Milvus milvus) in Europe. Kite = Bird.

Red kite in flight (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Putting them all together, Chris Darbey (@chrisddarbey) photographed a red kite with a jet contrail. Kite=Bird + Plane.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons, tweet embedded from @ChrisDDarby)

Pumpkin Day Number 2

Books & Events
Girl holding little orange pumpkin (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

24 November 2022

Today is the second pumpkin festival of the year that celebrates this cultivar of the New World squash Cucurbita pepo. On Halloween we carve pumpkins. On Thanksgiving we eat them.

Pumpkin flowers (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Pumpkin pie (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

I am very fond of pumpkin pie. It’s a good excuse to eat lots of whipped cream.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Pumpkin pie slice smothered in whipped cream (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)