Wild Turkey Fight?

Bird Behavior, Doves & Chickens
Wild turkey male, strutting (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

23 Nov 2022

Wild turkeys are ancestors of the domestic turkeys we eat on Thanksgiving. Understandably, wild turkeys avoid humans but in rare instances a male becomes aggressive toward people. This happens because turkeys are social birds.

Wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) flocks have a social structure called a pecking order that’s especially important during the breeding season in March to May. Dominant males puff and strut and confront other males to maintain their own dominance. If a subordinate gets out of line the dominant turkey struts and gobbles at him, pecks him, or flies at him with spurs exposed. Notice the spur below.

Male wild turkey, focus on the spur (cropped photo from Wikimedia Commons)

A dominant male who is acclimated to people may mistake us as subordinates and try to put us in our place. Occasionally one becomes fixated on bicycles and the cyclists riding them(*).

In one case in Livermore, California an aggressive wild turkey made a motorist’s day. A policeman stopped a speeding driver and was going to issue a ticket but a wild turkey saw the motorcycle and challenged the police officer.

Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife has advice on how to prevent wild turkey aggression toward people.

Aggressive behavior towards people occurs when turkeys have become overly comfortable in the presence of humans, usually over several months or even years, in areas where turkeys are fed. [For this reason] Never intentionally leave out food like bird seed or corn in attempts to help or view turkeys.

— Spring Tips for Aggressive Turkeys

(*) p.s. I wonder if male turkeys that attack bicycles mistake the wheels for large fanned tail displays.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons, videos embedded from YouTube)

Just a Little Peregrine Activity

Peregrines
Male peregrine at Westinghouse Bridge, 19 November 2022 (photo by Dana Nesiti)

22 November 2022

November is a quiet time for Pittsburgh area peregrines. Most of them stay on territory all winter but expand their range because food is less abundant at this time of year. Some peregrines make brief trips away from home but roost on their “cliff” when they come back.

Above, at the Westinghouse Bridge last Saturday Dana Nesiti found the male of the local peregrine pair preening in the sun. Below, Jeff Cieslak took a zoomed-in photo of the Cathedral of Learning from about a mile away. Both peregrines were perched on the 38th floor ledge on the Heinz Chapel side. This is a reliable place to find them in November but you’ll need binoculars!

Cathedral of Learning with two peregrines, 17 November 2022 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)

The snapshot camera sees Morela and Ecco at the nest via motion detection. In November they visit infrequently and don’t stay very long. This slideshow shows their visits in the past 10 days.

December will see the low point of local peregrine winter activity. In January the begin to think about spring. Watch for them here on the snapshot camera.

(photos by Dana Nesiti, Jeff Cieslak and the National Aviary snapshot camera at Univ of Pittsburgh)

Definition: “cliff” = in the urban setting their home cliff is a bridge or building.

Watch Your Feeders For Two Rare Birds

Migration, Songbirds
Evening grosbeak, January 2013 (photo by Steve Gosser)

21 November 2022

In September the Finch Research Network’s Winter Finch Forecast predicted that evening grosbeaks and pine siskins would irrupt southward this winter. In the past week Pennsylvania Rare Bird Alerts reported 55 sightings of evening grosbeaks and 11 of pine siskins in the state. Some are in western Pennsylvania right now and both are seed-eaters so you might see them at your feeders. Here’s what to look for.

Evening grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus)

Evening grosbeaks are big bulky finches, larger than northern cardinals, that are shaped like rose-breasted grosbeaks. The male is bright yellow with black accents and white wing patches. When you see him at your feeder you’ll fall in love.

Male evening grosbeak (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Male evening grosbeak seen from the back (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

The females and immature males are not as striking but still beautiful. In bright light they look like enormous goldfinches with fat necks and big beaks.

Female or immature male evening grosbeak (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

On gray days the females and immatures look drab but unmistakable for their size and huge beaks.

Female/immature evening grosbeak (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Evening grosbeaks love sunflower seeds so keep some on hand to attract any that might be flying over. Doug Gross says they also love these wild foods: Seeds of box elder, ash, elm, tulip poplar, hackberry, pine, spruce, larch. Fruits of cherries, apples, crabapples, poison ivy, hawthorn, juniper (red cedar), Russian olive.

This PA map shows where evening grosbeaks have been reported in eBird this month through 20 Nov.

Evening grosbeak sightings in Pennsylvania and surrounding areas, Nov 1-20, 2022 (map from eBird)

p.s. How rare are evening grosbeaks? Their population has declined 90% in the past 50 years! Watch this video by Wild Excellence Films called Irruption: An Opportunity For Evening Grosbeak Conservation about David Yeany’s project to tag and track evening grosbeaks and learn more about the threats they face.

Pine siskin (Spinus pinus)

Pine siskins resemble female house finches but are warm brown in color (not gray-brown) and have sharp pointy beaks with a faint touch of yellow on their wings. They often hang out with goldfinches.

Pine siskin at feeder with American goldfinch (photo by Lauri Shaffer)

They love niger at the feeder and pull seeds from alder and arborvitae cones.

Pine siskins feasting on the seeds in alder cones (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Though petite in size, pine siskins strenuously defend their feeder perches against other birds. Here one shouts at a male house finch.

Pine siskin yells at a house finch (photo by Tom Moeller)

Keep your niger feeder filled and look hard at those goldfinches. This PA map shows where pine siskins have been reported in eBird this month through 20 Nov.

Pine siskin sightings in Pennsylvania and surrounding areas, Nov 1-20, 2022 (map from eBird)

Watch your feeders for two rare birds. You may get lucky!

(photos by Steve Gosser, Lauri Shaffer, Tom Moeller and from Wikimedia Commons, maps from eBird; click on the linked captions to see the originals)

Did You Sleep Enough?

Mammals
The Nap (painting by Jan Verhas, 1879)

20 November 2022

Last week as I walked past a team of Allegheny Goatscape goats munching invasive plants in Schenley Park, I noticed a sign that described their sleep cycles. The goats, who are guarded by a donkey, sleep 5 hours in a 24-hour day. The donkey sleeps only 3 hours. Imagine being able to function normally on so little sleep!

Goats and guard donkey at Frick Park in Aug 2020 (photo by Kate St. John)

Some animals sleep less than we do, some sleep more.

We humans, who average 8 hours per day, are well aware of our pets’ sleep cycles. Cats sleep 12 hours a day (so do mice!). When this man gets up his cat will curl up in the warm spot and go back to sleep.

Cat sleeping on man (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Adopted greyhounds are champions at sleeping 18 hours a day.

Greyhound sleeping (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Brown bats have one of the longest sleep cycles at almost 20 hours (19.9 hours per day according to this table).

Little brown bat sleeping (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Birds are in the middle, sleeping 10-12 hours a day, but their sleep is highly variable by species, place and season, especially in the Arctic where a summer “day” can be 24 hours long.

Sleeping duck (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Guppies sleep slightly less than humans at 7 hours a day.

Trinidadian guppies (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

And giraffes win the prize for the least sleep at only 1.9 hours a day!

Giraffe (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Did you get enough sleep last night? No? Then it’s time for a nap!

For more information see:

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

Seen This Week: Color and First Snow

Phenology, Plants & Fungi, Schenley Park, Weather & Sky
Burning bush leaf and fruit, 15 Nov 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)

19 November 2022

On Tuesday morning, 15 November, I found beautiful fruits on my walk in the neighborhood: Red berries on invasive burning bush (Euonymus alatus), purple berries on native American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana), and dusty blue fruit on invasive English ivy (Hedera helix).

American beautyberry, 15 Nov 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
English ivy berries, 15 Nov 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)

It began to snow so I hurried home and was glad I was indoors when it came down fast. It looks peaceful in slow motion at the end of this video.

The snow stuck to the grass, parked cars, and the Pitt peregrine nest …

Snow on the Pitt peregrine nest, 15 November 2022, 2:15pm

… then melted overnight as the temperature rose and low clouds moved in.

Low clouds at 8pm, 15 Nov 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)

By Friday most leaves were gone and the only green shrubs in Schenley Park were invasive plants: Bush honeysuckle in this view …

Scene in Schenley Park, 18 Nov 2022. The green shrubs are invasive honeysuckle (photo by Kate St. John)

… and bamboo near the railroad tracks.

Scene in Schenley Park, 18 Nov 2022. The green shrubs are invasive bamboo (photo by Kate St. John)

Tonight the temperature will drop to 19 degrees for a very cold start to the new week. Brrrrr!

(photos and video by Kate St. John)

The Juncos Are Back

Migration
Dark-eyed junco, Cape Cod, Dec 2019 (photo by Bob Kroeger)

18 November 2022

This week’s first snow on 15 November brought in the “snowbirds,” an influx of juncos from the north and higher elevations. Kathy Saunders had fifteen at her feeders while it was snowing on Tuesday afternoon.

Our slate-colored juncos look so crisp and clean: Sparrow-like with dark eyes, pink beak, no stripes, charcoal gray head and back and wings, and a white belly — the “clean little coveralls” described in William Stafford’s poem Juncos.

Even though juncos have color variations all the birds with dark eyes are the same species: dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis).

This vintage blog from 2015 lists some of the subspecies, shows off a yellow-eyed junco (different species!) and describes a subspecies hybrid found in Pittsburgh last February.

Eye Color Is All That Matters

(photo by Bob Kroeger)

Who’s There in the Fog?

Weather & Sky
Shadow in a Glory: a Brocken specter at Grisedale Pike (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

17 November 2022

Last weekend Chris Randall @ultrapeakschris tweeted a video of a shadowy figure walking in step with him in the fog. At first he thought it was another person. Instead it was a Brocken specter with a faint rainbow halo called a glory.

Spooky!

Wikipedia describes: A Brocken spectre is the magnified shadow of an observer cast in mid air upon any type of cloud opposite a strong light source (such as the sun). If the cloud consists of backscattered water droplets, a bright area and halo-like rainbow rings called a glory can be seen around the head or apperature silhouette. The phenomenon was named for Brocken Peak in Germany where it frequently occurs.

Sometimes the specter appears to hover in the sky like an angel as did this one with a triple glory that appeared to a mountain climbing team in Tajikistan.

Brocken spectre above the horizon, Peak Ozodi, Aug 2006 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Perhaps you’ve seen a Brocken specter from an airplane. I have, but I didn’t know what it was called.

Brocken specter and glory seen from an airplane over San Francisco area (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

And finally, you can create a Brocken specter in nighttime fog if you work at it. The caption on this photo says: “On an exceptionally foggy night, I parked my car at one end of the parking lot, facing into the lot, and covered one headlight with a floor mat. Standing before the uncovered light, I photographed the shadow that I was thus casting into the fog : a Brocken spectre.”

Brocken specter in California fog at night (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Who’s there in the fog? It’s you!

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

The Oort Cloud

Weather & Sky
Illustration of Oort cloud by Pablo Carlos Budassi via Wikimedia Commons

16 November 2022

Far, far away at the edge of our solar system there’s a spherical cloud of icy objects with an inner cloud like a bicycle spoke reaching toward the Sun. No one’s ever seen it. It’s the home of comets.

The Oort cloud is the theoretical concept of a cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). It is divided into two regions: a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud (or Hills cloud) and a spherical outer Oort cloud.

— Wikipedia: Oort cloud

The Hills cloud, or inner Oort cloud, contains roughly 5 times as many comets as the outer ring.

Diagram of Oort cloud (image from NASA via Wikimedia Commons)

Long-period comets (which take more than 200 years to orbit the Sun) probably come from the Oort Cloud, which is sometimes described as a “cometary reservoir.””

— NASA: Oort Cloud overview

It’s the home of Comet Hale-Bopp which appeared in 1997 and will return to the inner Solar System around the year 4385.

Comet Hale-Bopp, 1997, over Pazin in Istria/Croatia (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Hale-Bopp is out there with the planetesimals, minute planets believed to be composed of cosmic dust grains that accumulated with many others under gravitation to form a planet.

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

p.s. an AU is an Astronomical Unit = the distance from Earth to Sun in one Julian year (365.25 days).

8 Billion Of Us!

Climate Change, Musings & News

15 November 2022

Today the global human population has reached 8 billion. Lest we think our current growth rate is normal, this graph shows that human population since 10,000 BCE (the start of agriculture) has had a rapid and unnatural growth spurt in the last 70 years.

World population 100,000 BCE to 2021 from Our World in Data

There are so many humans now that we have changed the surface of the Earth, its atmosphere, and its climate just to supply our own needs.

Satellite image of Amazon basin in Bolivia (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Smog over Mexico City (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
(image from Wikimedia Commons)

This rate of growth is unsustainable and somehow our species naturally knows it. Population growth will continue but is slowing to a rate of only 1% by the end of this century. Unfortunately there will be 10.9 billion of us by then!

World population growth from Our World in Data

Asia will lead the world in slowing the rate while North America remains relatively stable. (Note: The dip in 2020 is COVID deaths outperforming births.)

Annual population growth by region from Our World in Data

How will we feed 8 to 10.9 billion people? Where will we live when the sea rises and the deserts expand?

It’s a good thing for humans and the planet that our species will stop reproducing quite so fast.

Read more about the slowing growth rate here at Our World in Data.

(photo/ graph links are in the captions. Slideshow photos from Wikimedia Commons in order: Rush hour in Russia, Beach in the Netherlands, Inauguration Day 2009, Crowded exhibit in India, Crowded street, Sao Paulo station, train surfing in Indonesia, crowded Faire in UK, train in Ecuador)

Thinking About Dung Beetles?

Bird Behavior, Insects, Southern Africa
Southern red-billed hornbill (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

13 November 2022

The southern red-billed hornbill (Tockus rufirostris) eats many things but dung beetles and their larvae are at the top of the menu.

Dung beetle with a ball of dung, Manyoni Private Game Reserve, South Africa (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Elephant dung is an especially good place to find them.

Southern red-billed hornbill looking for … (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

A 2016 study discovered that dung beetles evolved in association with dinosaurs, the ancestors of birds. Beetles were already eating living plants so when flowering plants (angiosperms) sprung up and dinosaurs began eating them, dung beetles evolved to scavenge plant matter found in dung.

However most of the dinosaurs went extinct and their bird ancestors don’t produce dung, so the dung beetles changed their focus to megafauna mammal poop. Elephant dung!

Apparently dung beetles will even fight over it.

So now it’s come full circle. A living dinosaur eats the dung beetles.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals, videos embedded from YouTube)