Outside My Window

Why do rare birds show up during fall migration?  Why does a young brant end up in Pittsburgh when these small geese always migrate far to the northeast?  Research published last spring in the Journal of Ornithology gives us a clue.

According to a study conducted by the University of Marburg, the Ornithological Society in Bavaria and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), migratory birds make mistakes in direction but not distance.  Simply put, they fly as far as they’re supposed to go but some of them have a compass error.

Scientists long suspected that birds have compasses, but it wasn’t until this century that they figured out it’s a receptor called cryptochrome located in the birds’ eyes.  In essence birds “see” the earth’s magnetic field.

Simply seeing it isn’t enough.  If you’ve used a compass you know about magnetic deviation.  Not only does the earth’s magnetic field bend around the planet but it deviates near metal, iron ore deposits and electro-magnetic interference so you must adjust the compass periodically.  Birds adjust their compasses too using the band of polarized light that crosses the zenith at sunrise and sunset.  Amazing!

Of course in any navigation system something can go wrong.  Birds with faulty compasses follow the instructions but fly to unusual locations.  Sometimes they’re lucky and end up in a safe place for the winter.  If they’re able to turn 180 degrees and go home in the spring, they will likely produce young with the same faulty compass headings.  Perhaps that’s why a small but increasing number of rufous hummingbirds now pass through Pennsylvania on their way to Georgia instead of flying the normal route due south from the Pacific Northwest to Mexico.

Juvenile birds make these directional mistakes more often than adults because they must rely on the compass exclusively.  They’ve never made the trip before.  Unlike the adults, they have no map.

Sadly for the young brant, its compass error – if that’s what brought it here – may be fatal.  If not we’ll get to see him all winter, just like the sandhill crane who spent last winter at Ethel Springs reservoir.

(photo of a Suunto compass from the Suunto website.  I use a fancier model with mirror.  I won’t hike without it.)

Remember this bird from my early November “What to Look For” list?   It’s a brant, a very unusual bird for Pittsburgh.

Back on October 28th I mentioned these birds because the first time I ever saw one was at Yellow Creek State Park in early November.  Little did I know that Jack Solomon would find a juvenile brant today at Duck Hollow on the Monongahela River. 

I can’t take any credit for predicting this.  Chuck Tague reminded me to look for the unexpected. 

p.s. Click here for Geoff Malosh’s photo of the Duck Hollow bird.

(photo of adult Brant by Chuck Tague)

I knew the crows were back in town for the winter but there was no doubt late yesterday in Oakland. 

Around 4:20pm thousands of crows started passing WQED, heading for Schenley Heights. 

I wish I’d thought to count them but I missed my chance.  Not a big loss though.  They’ll give me ample opportunity in the days and weeks ahead.

Here’s what they looked like last winter as they passed Carnegie Mellon University.  Click on Tom Merriman’s photo to get a better idea of how they fill the sky.

(photo thanks to Tom Merriman, who knows about my addiction to crows)

p.s.  If you read “Hope is the bird…” November 15th but didn’t find out if I saw tundra swans, read the answer at the end of that post.

Nature is slowing down as winter settles in.

In every other season, nature changes so rapidly that two weeks of “what to look for” is a very long list.  But now a month of sightings will do, so Chuck Tague describes late November through early December in his latest phenology for western Pennsylvania.

Here’s a peek at Chuck’s list, plus a few suggestions of my own.

• We’ve entered the time of frost, snow, ice and rime.  I remember rime last year at the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch.
• Waterfowl are still on the move.  As lakes freeze up north more birds come our way:  tundra swans, loons, scaup, ring-necks, buffleheads, mergansers, goldeneye and ruddy ducks.
• Gulls will come to the rivers.
• Northern shrikes will show up at rural thickets.
• Check manured fields for horned larks, lapland longspurs and snow buntings (pictured here).  They all look dull in winter to match the ground.
• Be prepared for irruptive migrants.  In November 2000 a snowy owl showed up at Duquesne University, a life bird for me!
• Today in Pittsburgh, there will be 9 hours and 45 minutes of daylight.  A month from now - nearly the solstice - we’ll have only 9 hours and 16 minutes.  The half hour we lose will be subtracted from the morning.

(photo of a Snow Bunting by Chuck Tague)

…that I wait to see.

As I write, the weather is changing in western Pennsylvania.  After an all day southerly rain the wind has shifted and is gusting from the west.  We’ll have snow showers tonight and lake effect snow up north.

I want to see tundra swans.   

I hope they’ve advanced ahead of the storm and are waiting at Lake Arthur.  If they’re there they’ll stay the night during this bad weather. 

Maybe I’ll see them tomorrow.  It’s the only day I can go looking for them. 

I hope I find a flock, not just one or two.  I hope to see them fly.  I hope they land on the lake while gentle snow falls around them.  I hope to see them as beautifully as Steve Gosser did when he took this picture. 

I’ll just have to wait and see.  I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Sunday, November 16:   

I saw them! 

But first I heard them – a flock of 94 tundra swans in a huge V overhead.  Later, another flock passed by but I was too absorbed in the swans on the lake to jump up and look. 

It was nearly everything I hoped.  I sat quietly and watched 11 of them, two families traveling together – one with three youngsters, the other with four.  The adults kept a watchful eye.  Snow fell gently.  I sat until I was too cold to stay any longer. 

Good weather for swans.

(photo by Steve Gosser)

Sometimes I have the coolest job!

Last week Jill Lykins in our TV programming department asked if I’d review the upcoming PBS Nature show called American Eagle that will air this Sunday, November 16 at 8:00pm.

Of course I said “Yes.”  Who wouldn’t want to watch a show about bald eagles?

I received the preview disk yesterday and watched it last night.  To me, it was even better than “White Falcon, White Wolf.”

Instead of taking a hands off look at wildlife (White Falcon never had people on screen), this show follows two guys who are hooked on bald eagles.  We get to see what they see – and they see a lot!

Bob Anderson of the Raptor Resource Project and cinematographer Neil Rettig film eagles at their winter staging grounds in the Upper Mississippi Valley and in Alaska.  They talk about their memories of when eagles were scarce and how fascinated they are by these birds.  Both of them film eagle families at the nest.

I especially liked the nest scenes – it was like watching the peregrine webcams.  There’s great footage of eagles locking talons during courtship flights, parents incubating eggs and feeding chicks, fledglings learning to fly, eagles catching fish right out of the water, eagles playing tag with prey.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

If you’ve been following bald eagles on my blog, you won’t want to miss this show on Sunday, November 16th at 8:00pm on PBS.  In Pittsburgh, that’s WQED.

(photo from PBS Nature.  Click on the photo to preview the show.)

A few weeks ago I was interviewed as part of The Allegheny Front’s Environmental Oral History Project.  Tonight that interview will air on WYEP 91.3 FM between 7:00pm and 7:30pm.   In it, I talk about birds, nature and how they inspire me.

If you miss the show, it will be rebroadcast this Saturday at 6:30am or you can listen online.

The one good thing about winter is that it’s easy for me to be up before the sun.  Despite the cold I sit on my front porch and watch the sky, waiting for the birds to wake up. 

It is still dark.  The wind is cold.  The weather has changed. 

Silhouetted against the clouds a lone mourning dove shoots for the sky and suddenly dives for cover.  He’s seen a coopers hawk perched above, invisible to me in the half light.  The coopers hawk tries for the dove, misses, and flies away.  The idea of a dove for breakfast roused him earlier than he’d planned.

A moment of silence and then I hear a distant caw.  The first flock of crows has left the roost.  Over a hundred crows in this initial push, flying close together, doubling back on themselves, making a circle above my house.  The wind complicates their progress and keeps them focused and silent.  For the next twenty minutes flocks of crows pulse by, a hundred at a time.

The sky brightens a little and high above the crows loose flocks of robins fly south.  I wonder if they’re migrating today or merely going out to forage and return. 

Now the dark-eyed juncoes begin to twitter from the hedges while squadrons of starlings pass overhead.  More birds call from the underbrush - cardinals and song sparrows.  There are so many birds on the move that I can no longer count them, though the sun hasn’t risen yet.

Then exactly at dawn a single house sparrow in my neighbor’s spruce says “cheep.”  Soon the entire flock is chattering inside the tree, conducting a long conversation to greet and plan the day.

The cold has penetrated my coat.  I’ve finished my coffee.  If I wait any longer I’ll be stiff from cold.  Time to go indoors and start my day, too.

(stock photo from Shutterstock)

Though a few dark-eyed juncos have been in Pittsburgh since late October, the flocks showed up in force last weekend.  When they arrive I always think of this poem by William Stafford.

During the breeding season juncos prefer colder climates.  They breed in Canada and New England into northern Pennsylvania and the Appalachian mountains.  Habitat is everything.  That’s why they’re found on Laurel Mountain in the summer.

Interestingly, eastern Massachusetts doesn’t have the right habitat for them to breed.  So it’s from my Boston friends that I learned juncos are called “snowbirds” because they arrive with the first snow.

Juncos aren’t the only snowbirds on the move.  Chuck and Joan Tague left town last weekend to spend the winter in Florida.  Chuck supplies most of the photos on my blog, so I’m hoping my stay-at-home friends will supply me with a few pictures of Pennsylvania’s winter birds.  Thus, this photo is by…

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Outside My Window is one year old today!

Little did I know when I started this blog how far it would come and how many people I’d meet.

A year ago blogging was all new to me.  I didn’t know the mechanics of WordPress (the software that displays this blog), I desperately needed photos to illustrate each entry, and I had a low level dread of running out of things to write about.  Added to that was the fear that no one would read it and my efforts would be pointless.

Those worries quickly disappeared.  Chuck Tague, and many new friends, supply me with beautiful photos.  I seldom run short of subject matter and the blog has been fun to write especially when I have to do research.  I’ve learned more about birds and hope you have too.

There have been ups and downs along the way, the happiness of baby birds and the sadness of a young peregrine’s death, the exciting blogs and the boring ones.  I’ve even received a little bit of unexpected fame.

But the best part has been meeting you, my readers.  I am amazed and pleased at how many of you there are.   You’ve helped me with questions, suggestions, photos and – thankfully – corrections.

So this celebration is really about you.  I’d love to meet more of you.  Leave a comment below and let me know which blogs were your favorites.  Have I missed a topic you’d like me to explore?  Do you have a photo or a question?

And please do tell me where you’re from.  I would love to know how far this blog reaches.  Does it go around the world?  Only you can tell.

(Thanks to Joan Guerin for the birthday cake.  Click on the cupcake and wait a few seconds to see a surprise.)