By the time you read this, the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere will have passed today at 5:13am(ET). We call it the beginning of summer but in northern Europe it’s “Midsummer,” celebrated in Midsummer Festivals this coming weekend.
This Friday in Latvia they might wear traditional garb with a wool shawl but they aren’t rigorous about staying in character. (If your mobile rings, answer it.) In Finland they wear jackets around the bonfire.
Something like a sunflower with insect on leaf, Nine Mile Run Trail in Frick Park, 23 June 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
20 June 2022
Hot weather returns tomorrow so next Sunday’s outing is aimed for the shade along Nine Mile Run. We’ll finish on time or earlier, before it gets too hot.
Join me for a bird & nature walk in Frick Park starting at Commercial Street on Sunday, June 26, 8:30a – 10:30a.
We’ll identify this “something like a sunflower” (photo at top) and we’ll see baby birds. I’m hoping for an orchard oriole (Icterus spurius).
Dress for hot weather with a sun hat and comfortable walking shoes. Bring water(*) and binoculars.
Before you come, visit my Events page in case of changes or cancellations. The outing will be canceled if there’s lightning or heavy rain.
Hope to see you there.
(*) Tip on bringing water: When I know it’ll be hot I freeze a not-quite-full water bottle overnight. The ice melts as I’m walking and the water is always cold. The only downside is that condensation makes the bottle wet my backpack.
Chicory with fly, Schenley Park, 15 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
19 June 2022
Wildflowers bloom in two spurts in southwestern Pennsylvania: Woodland wildflowers in April before leaf out, “field” flowers in July-August after the solstice.
May and June are practically flowerless except for a few non-natives blooming in Schenley Park last week. Some are invasive. They thrive because deer don’t eat them.
The wanderer voices her opinion, 17 June 2022 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
18 June 2022
Yesterday morning at 7:45am I got a call from Game Warden Doug Bergman. He was heading to an assignment in Fayette County but had just received a call that a peregrine fledgling was walking on McClure Street in Pittsburgh. By the time he could finish in Fayette and drive back to Pittsburgh it would be afternoon, way too long for this bird to be on the street.
Peregrine fledglings cannot take off from the ground in their first 24 hours of flight so this one needed an assist to get up to a high perch and start over again. Could I help?
Google Maps showed the incident at the corner of McClure and Eckert Streets — the Eckert Street peregrine nest. Jeff Cieslak had called in the trouble ticket and Jeff was still on site. Maybe we could put the bird on a nearby roof — if we could catch it. I would get there by 9:00am.
The trouble started around 6:30am when Marcy Kemmler, owner of Don’s Diner, saw a peregrine fledgling walking on the street. She stopped traffic, herded the bird onto the sidewalk and called Jeff. By the time he arrived Marcy had already saved the bird’s life several times. It was standing in clover under the California Avenue Bridge. Its size looked female to me.
Peregrine fledgling on the ground at McClure Street, 17 June 2022 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
The fledgling walked behind Don’s Diner and jumped up to the highest spot she could find, two feet off the ground.
Peregrine fledgling behind Don’s Diner, 17 June 2022 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
She continued walking into Don’s Diner parking lot under the Eckert Street Bridge. When I arrived Jeff was guarding the bird at the base of the arch. Marcy and I walked toward Jeff. The bird’s mother started shouting from her perch on the California Avenue Bridge.
Eckert Street mother peregrine shouts from the California Avenue Bridge, 17 July 2022 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
The fledgling was on the ground between the two arches (to the right of the red square in photo below). Jeff blocked the bird’s retreat away from the Diner while Marcy and I blocked its progress toward it. We didn’t realize we were loosely surrounding the fledgling but the bird’s mother did realize it and warned her youngster. Meanwhile Marcy was praying that the bird would walk up the arch.
I had never seen a peregrine walk up a bridge so I didn’t understand the significance of Marcy’s prayer until it was answered. The bird flapped up to the arch and walk-flapped its way to the top. Whew!
Peregrine fledgling walk-flaps her way up the arch, 17 June 2022 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
After it made it to near the top of the beam, we moved away to try to get a better look. Kate said, “Now would be a good time for the adults to feed it,” and as if on cue, the male comes back from his (successful) hunt, and the female flies out to scream at him (normal) and guide him directly to the newly-returned fledgling. I didn’t get any pics of that because I was amazed that it was even happening.
Just before we left Marcy said, “What should we call this bird?” It didn’t take long to decide. Marcy said, “Let’s call her Trouble.”
(photos by Jeff Cieslak, screenshot of Don’s Diner from WPXI)
UPDATE from Jeff Cieslak on 18 June @ Eckert, 8pm: Marcy called, the bird was on the ground again this evening and the sun was going down. I was just relaying the story of Friday’s adventure to my friends, so we hop in the car and drove down to try to help. By the time I got there, Marcy had shepherded the bird back to the beam and it was crawling up the beam when we pulled into the parking lot. Marcy adds: “Trouble was down in the street again tonight and I got it all the way back up to the bridge. Jeff was just pulling in with his wife to try to help and I got it back up. We surely are naming that thing Trouble but it’s so amazing and it was really talking to me too. It got stuck in my little fence and I had to get it out.” Fortunately after 18 June, Trouble got over this phase and didn’t get into trouble again.
p.s. Watch this WPXI video about Don’s Diner and a movie filmed there a year ago in April 2021. Another movie will begin production at Don’s Diner next week.
Mammatus clouds over Pittsburgh, 16 June 2022, 9:00pm (photo by Kate St. John)
17 June 2022
Severe thunderstorms were predicted for 6:00pm yesterday in the upper Ohio Valley. By 2:00pm the Severe Thunderstorm Watch called for an inch of rain in 1 hour — definitely flash flood material — but at 5:00pm the storm line split. Some went north toward I-80, the rest went south to West Virginia. Pittsburgh had no lightning, no strong winds, no rain. Nothing happened. But the sky got weird.
At sunset the last of the storm clouds left our area with a flourish of rare mammatus clouds, dramatically lit from below. Their name is derived from the Latin word for breast or udder.
As Wikipedia explains, mammatus are formations that hang from the base of rain clouds. The distinct lumpy undersides are formed by cold air sinking down to form pockets. Usually composed of ice, each lobe averages 1/2 to 2 miles across and 0.3 mile deep. Alone a lobe can last 10 minutes but a cluster may last several hours.
Mammatus are an indication of a severe thunderstorm in the vicinity. In Pittsburgh often show up after the storm has passed.
The clouds started out as lines and gave way to stratus clouds and a gleam at sunset.
Mammatus clouds forming lines, Pittsburgh PA, 8:58pm, 16 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Mammatus clouds looking east, Pittsburgh PA, 8:58pm, 16 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Last line of mammatus clouds gives way to stratus at sunset, looking west, Pittsburgh PA, 9:05pm, 16 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Next time you see these weird clouds, remember their name describes their shape.
p.s. Steve Tirone left a comment with a link to his video of the clouds.
To see this effect on paper meteorologists create a wind rose that graphs the wind’s direction and speed over time. The petals indicate the percentage of wind from each direction. The colors show the speed. The center is calm. Let’s look at some wind roses from Iowa State’s Iowa Environmental Mesonet.
Though Pittsburgh is not a particularly windy place our 50-year wind rose (1970-2022) indicates our prevailing wind is from the southwest. 10.9% of the time there is no wind at all.
In places where wind is not obstructed, such as the coast and the Great Plains, wind roses are lopsided. This map shows the locations of three extreme wind roses displayed below.
When the invasive spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) was first discovered near Allentown, Pennsylvania in 2014, biologists and farmers worried that it would destroy agriculture and kill native trees. Now that the insect has been in North America for seven years and shown what it can do, scientists have their revised their advice about this bug.
Back in 2014 we had no experience with spotted lanternfly so we looked to another place where it is invasive — South Korea — and applied their experience to our landscape. The forecast was bad, the prognosis dire.
Fortunately the bug didn’t do what we thought it would. The only tree it kills is its host tree, tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima), one of the worst invasive plants in North America.
The Allegheny Front reported in February that the widest economic impact is felt by businesses that must inspect everything before they transport goods — and potential lanternflies — from quarantined to non-infected locations.
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is still tracking the bug’s advance so report it in counties where it’s new. Here’s the spotted lanternfly quarantine as of March 2022.
as of March 2022
Like other invaders, spotted lanternflies surge in an area, then ebb when they exhaust their food supply. During a surge they are worse than annoying.
Overall, the spotted lanternfly is not as bad as we feared.
Male song sparrows sing to claim territory and avoid fighting with rivals. Each male has a unique song that creates an audio boundary marker that other males are expected to honor. When a rival intrudes, the owner escalates with aggressive signals before he attacks. If you know what to look for, you can tell when a song sparrow is angry.
The owners reacted to the stuffed singing intruder as if he was real and escalated as follows:
When the intruder first arrived, the owner matched the intruder’s song. If this didn’t drive off the intruder …
The owner repeatedly flew and landed near the intruder, wing-waving and singing softly. “Wing waving” is vibrating one wing at a time. Soft song is more aggressive than shouting.
When none of this worked the owner attacked the intruder.
This video from the Univ of Washington shows the second step — wing waving and soft song — with narration by one of the researchers. Notice one wing raised and waved at 0:27. Wing raising is a happy greeting between male and female cardinals. Not so with song sparrows!
The stuffed intruder would not leave, even when the owner sang softly, so the owner attacked. Yow!
Some salamanders are easy to find, some are rarely seen, and some, like the green salamander, are so rare that they’re listed as Near Threatened. It was quite a surprise to find anything, let alone green salamanders, thriving in the remnants of mountaintop removal in Virginia in 2016.
The green salamander (Aneides aeneus), native from Alabama to Pennsylvania, is a habitat specialist that lives in the dark furrows of naturally moist rock outcrops on cliffs in the Alleghenies and Cumberland Plateau.
In April 2016 when Dr. Wally Smith of University of Virginia Wise County decided to look for salamanders at an old mountaintop removal site, he didn’t expect to find anything in the half-acre remnant of rocks and trees left by the mining company. He was stunned and overjoyed to find a green salamander.
Working with Kevin Hamed of Virginia Highlands Community College, Smith surveyed more mountaintop removal sites. There’s a lot from choose from in Wise County, Virginia.
Unsurprisingly, hillsides and rock walls that had been directly carved up or deforested didn’t hold any salamanders. But around 70 percent of the surviving natural outcrops did—often in surprisingly healthy numbers. As long as the old crevasses and tree-cover were present, the species showed up, regardless of the racket and disturbance nearby. “The salamanders in these pockets seem to be doing pretty well,” Smith said. “They’re abundant, they’re reproducing, which are signs that the populations are still hanging on.”
The discovery led to more questions so Smith and Hamed expanded their search and, with the help of locals and landowners, found 70 locations with salamanders including …
… a motherload of salamanders in the municipal park of a local city. “Usually if you’re lucky, you find one or two a day. There, we were finding 70 to 100 per hour,” said Smith.
How did green salamanders get to these sites? Is each site a remnant “island” population or do the groups interchange with populations elsewhere? The study continues.
If you want to avoid mosquito bites, there’s new research on how to do it.
Female mosquitos must eat blood in order to produce eggs so they fly around looking for a host. A new study led by the University of Washington teased out an additional way that mosquitos find us.
“I used to say there are three major cues that attract mosquitoes: your breath, your sweat and the temperature of your skin,” said Riffell, who is senior author on the paper.
“In this study, we found a fourth cue: the color red, which can not only be found on your clothes, but is also found in everyone’s skin. The shade of your skin doesn’t matter, we are all giving off a strong red signature. Wearing clothes that avoid those colors, could be another way to prevent a mosquito biting.” …
Without any odor stimulus, mosquitoes largely ignored a dot at the bottom of the chamber, regardless of color. After a spritz of CO2 into the chamber, mosquitos continued to ignore the dot if it were green, blue or purple in color. But if the dot were red, orange, or black, mosquitoes would fly toward it.
This wasn’t just a few mosquitoes. The study tracked more than 1.3 million mosquito trajectories and found that they ignore green, blue or purple, and are attracted to red, orange, or black.
p.s. The study also said: “CO2 induces a strong attraction to specific spectral bands, including those that humans perceive as cyan, orange, and red.” Cyan looks blue-green to me.
