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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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).
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.”
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
