Scallops travel by opening and closing their shells but the direction they move seems counterintuitive. They don’t lead with their hinges. Instead the open edge goes first as they use their eyes to guide themselves.
Scallops’ eyes look like bright beads at the shells’ front edge.
Wingstem from bud to seed, Schenley Park, 3 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
6 August 2022
By early August many flowers have already produced seeds. Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) above displays every step in the process: buds, new flowers, fading flowers and seed packets.
The three-flanged seed pods of American wild yamroot (Dioscorea villosa) are as distinctive as its pleated leaves.
American wild yamroot leaves and seeds, Jennings 29 July 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) now has both seed pods and flowers (seeds in shadow at left). This alien plant is easy to find in Schenley Park because it is toxic to deer.
Greater celandine with seeds in the background, Schenley Park, 3 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
This week the clouds at sunrise varied from brooding horizontal stripes to dramatic ragged puffs.
Sunrise on 4 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
This tall stack presaged scattered thunderstorms though none had been predicted.
Cloud stack on 4 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Twice this week isolated rain clouds created spectacular rainbows half an hour before sunset. This one on 4 August has a faint second rainbow above it.
Rainbow(s) on 4 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Vine on a vine: Dodder on porcelain berry, 26 July 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
4 August 2022
By the end of July in western Pennsylvania, there are patches of orange string draped over plants in moist locations on the edge of the forest. The orange strings are dodder (Cuscata), a native annual parasitic vine that blooms from July to October.
Dodder wraps itself around its host and inserts tiny haustoria to suck out water and nutrients. Last week I found it parasitizing invasive porcelain berry — Go, dodder! — but dodder won’t beat back the grapevine. Dodder doesn’t kill its host.
Orange string on everything: Dodder wrapped on invasive alien plants, 26 July 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Look very closely and you can the haustoria clinging and dodder’s tiny flowers that are pollinated by wasps.
Dodder in bloom (photo by Esther Allen)
Dodder will die at the end of the growing season yet you may find it in the same spot every year. Find out why this happens and other interesting tidbits in this vintage article.
What do you do when your nest and babies sail away without you? A house finch couple on Pittsburgh’s North Shore have learned to wait for the boat to come home.
Male and female house finches, Nov 2010 (photo by Steve Gosser)
This spring a pair of house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) were very quick to build a nest atop a loud speaker on the aft deck of the Rivers of Steel Explorer, docked behind the Carnegie Science Center. By the time the crew caught up with them the female had finished the nest and laid eggs, so the nest had to remain undisturbed until it was empty.
House finch nest on top of loud speaker on Rivers of Steel Explorer vessel, 29 July 2022 (photo by Ryan O’Rourke)
When would it be empty? Not yet. In August? In September?
House finches are masters at back-to-back nesting, raising three to six broods per year. As the young approach fledging the male takes charge of them while the female starts the next round of egg laying. On the Explorer the female doesn’t pause between one brood and the next.
When I met the Explorer finch family on 26 July they had already raised several broods and were caring for young approximately two days old. While our tour waited on deck for the boat to depart the father fed three tiny nestlings. They are growing fast! Here they are three days later on 29 July.
Close up of house finch nest, 29 July 2022 (photo by Ryan O’Rourke)
Our tour pulled away from the dock and I forgot about the house finches for 90 minutes while we traveled Pittsburgh’s three rivers. Mother and father house finch were absent but they had not forgotten. Waiting on shore they were so attuned to the habits of the Explorer that when the vessel maneuvered to dock they raced across the channel to the aft deck. “The kids are home!”
The Traveling Nest is one of many birding highlights on Rivers of Steel Explorer tours. Captain Ryan O’Rourke explained, “In addition to hosting a bird-watching cruise with the National Aviary, part of our educational program for students includes a lesson in birding and how birds can be indicators of the health of our rivers.”
Teasel in bloom, Schenley Park, 26 July 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
2 August 2022
This flower head is so spiny and eye catching that we rarely look at the leaves though they’ve been studied intensely at least three times since the 1870s.
Teasel’s (Dipsacus fullonum) paired perfoliate leaves collect rainwater in the cup where they clasp the stem and unwary insects drown in the puddle. Notice the water in the leaf cups below. (Click the first photo to see a marked-up version showing the water line.)
In the mid 1870s Francis Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, hypothesized that teasel digests the decaying insects, then studied and published about the digestive mechanism. Not everyone was convinced. Teasels were studied again and again.
Teasels obviously use spines to defend themselves, but do they play offense, too? Are they carnivorous? It would be nice to think so but we don’t know.
Read more in this 2017 article In Defense of Plants, published before the 2019 study.
(photos by Kate St. John and from Wikimedia Commons)
Twelve of us met in Schenley Park yesterday morning and walked East Circuit Road in search of birds. As expected in late July the birds were quiet, though we did manage to see or hear 27 species. Our checklist is here and listed at the end.
Best Bird was a pileated woodpecker hammering on a fallen log in the darkest woods. The photo above is not from our walk. Chad+Chris Saladin had better light for their photo in May 2020.
I forgot to take a picture of the group. 🙁 Here is my one photo from the walk: Yellow hawkweed (Pilosella caespitosa) blooming in the grass.
Hawkweed blooming at Schenley Park, 31 July 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
eBird checklist: Schenley Park, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Jul 31, 2022 8:30A – 10:30A Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) 2 Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica) 8 Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) 2 Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) 4 Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) 1 Hairy Woodpecker (Dryobates villosus) 2 Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) 1 Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) 5 Eastern Wood-Pewee (Contopus virens) 1 Heard Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus) 1 Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) 4 American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) 7 Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) 6 Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) 1 White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) 1 House Wren (Troglodytes aedon) 3 Young with obvious gape-beak Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus) 1 European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) 2 Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) 1 Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) 1 Heard one making agitated call American Robin (Turdus migratorius) 15 House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) 2 American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) 3 Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina) 1 Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) 2 Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) 1 Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) 5
(pileated woodpecker photo by Chad+Chris Saladin; hawkweed photo by Kate St. John)
If our city pigeons were this beautiful, would we take them for granted?
The pink-necked green pigeon (Treron vernans), a native of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, is a fruit-eating forest bird well adapted to human landscapes. Graced with the colors of a pastel rainbow, the male is sometimes called the rainbow dove.
Despite the female’s camouflage, nesting safely is a challenge. When she sees a threat approaching she opens her wings to look larger but her display doesn’t scare off the male Asian koel (Eudynamys scolopaceus) who successfully steals her eggs. (Despite their appearance Asian koels are cuckoos, not crows.)
As for the pigeons, they will court and lay a new clutch very soon.
Frank Izaguirre’s experience in Oakland is typical. The first one appeared on 17 July but within ten days the number of bugs had grown so fast that finding and killing them, as recommended by the PA Dept of Agriculture(*), became a daunting daily chore.
Annie Quinn noticed them in a park and enlisting her kids to squash them on the ground. Then she looked up and saw hundreds and hundreds coating the upper branches of the trees. “Kids, this problem is much bigger than we are.”
Spotted lanternflies climbing a red maple (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Indeed! I saw hundreds (thousands?) on the North Shore near the Carnegie Science Center on Tuesday 26 July.
And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Julie Urban, an associate professor of entomology at Penn State, said residents of the area will see a lot more lanternflies in September.
“They’re starting to emerge as adults about now and then when they start to mate more heavily you’re going to see a lot more in the first couple weeks of September,” said Urban. “That’s just when they’re more active. So, be ready for that.”
Since each female lanternfly lays an egg mass containing 30-50 eggs, the population grows exponentially every year: 1 > 50 > 2,500 > 125,000 > 6.2 million!
It took just 2.5 years to go from “What’s the problem?” to “Oh my gosh!”
There is no way we can squash them individually. However there are easy ways to passively kill them in our yards. Three years ago a girl in New Jersey came up with a very inexpensive and effective trap.
Other inexpensive do-it-yourself traps are described at these YouTube links: A simple tulle trap, the simplified hoop trap and an elaborate v2 Trap that requires tools. In any case if you make a trap, use netting not glue. Glue tape indiscriminately kills bees, bats and small birds that try to feast on the trapped bugs.
This is our first Summer of the Spotted Lanternfly in Pittsburgh, but it’s not the last.
St. John’s wort on the South Side, 17 July 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
30 July 2022
Wrapping up July …
St. John’s wort’s yellow flowers always attract my attention because the plant shares my name. Find out what’s in the name in this vintage article from 2012.
