Outside My Window

Last Thursday I received word that the two juvenile peregrines in rehab had fully recovered and were ready for release.  Both were injured on June 24.  “Yellow,” from the University of Pittsburgh, was found trapped in a chimney and dehydrated.  “White,” born at the Gulf Tower, banged her head and was unable to fly well. 

By last Thursday both birds proved they could fly and hunt on their own — very important because their siblings have left home and their parents are no longer offering training.  The two were slated for release somewhere near Pittsburgh within sight of their home nest buildings.  If they chose to fly home they could, but chances were just as good they’d take the opportunity to leave town on their life’s adventures.

Not knowing when they’d fly free, I’ve watched and waited to see if there were any changes at Pitt.   No.  Every day Karen and I see only one peregrine and it’s normally roosting — probably Dorothy.

Meanwhile in Lancaster County, Meredith Lombard reported that both fledgling peregrines at the Route 462 bridge had an exciting and nearly fatal first flight.  Last week they fledged into the river where they paddled and flapped to keep afloat for hours.  Fortunately the Susquehanna River is shallow and slow in July and many people were checking on the birds.  Both fledglings were rescued and delivered to an island where their parents fed them immediately.  Read more about their adventures here.  And check for photo updates from Meredith Lombard here.

Peregrine activity is really winding down.  Let me know if you see any of them.

(photo of Yellow at the University of Pittsburgh, June 4, 2010, by Kimberly Thomas)

(Indulge me for a moment.  Any opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of WQED.)

Yesterday I wrote about orange water.  If you live in Pennsylvania you’ve seen creeks like this one.  If you haven’t, keep in mind this photo is not retouched.  The water is indeed bright orange.

Welcome to Blacklick Creek, the Stonycreek River, the upper reaches of Slippery Rock Creek and tributaries of the Conemaugh, the Casselman, the Youghiogheny and the Monongahela.

The list goes on and on.  Our water is damaged across the state.  It’s the legacy of coal.

During the coal rush Pennsylvania didn’t have strict mining laws and enforcement.  There were no rules about tailings and water and the coal companies never had to put up any money or pay a severance tax to clean up future problems.  They made a lot of money and coal was cheap because the long term cost was passed on to us.  A hundred years later we have water we can’t drink and creeks with no fish and none of the wildlife and birds that depend on them.

Pennsylvania has learned from this history, right?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Our state is now in the midst of the Marcellus Shale gas rush that’s been going on a couple of years.  Before we knew this might hurt something, and before our laws could catch up, our water told the tale.

Marcellus Shale drilling is extremely water intensive, consuming 40 to 50 million gallons of water per well pad.  (Each well pad has 8 to 10 wells.)  The water is pumped from our creeks, rivers and lakes, lowering the water levels.  For example, a million gallons a day can be pulled from Cross Creek and Cross Creek Lake.

70% of the water is lost underground during high pressure hydraulic fracturing that mixes water, sand and over 200,000 gallons of toxic chemicals per well pad.  The rest returns to the surface extremely polluted, salty and more or less radioactive.

What happens then?  For those with water wells the drilling is a roll of the dice.  Many wells are OK but some become so dangerous you can’t even bathe in the water, let alone drink it.  People don’t find out until they get sick.

The rest of us are not exempt.  Right now there are no facilities that can remove the salts and radioactivity but municipal water treatment plants are allowed to accept the flowback water up to 1% of their output.  They dilute the flowback and we drink the results.

Tomorrow night on WQED you can learn more about Marcellus drilling’s effects on water when we rebroadcast “What’s in the Water? — An OnQ Special Series: Marcellus Shale Drilling,” hosted by Chris Moore.  Tune in on Wed, August 4 at 7:30pm or watch the segment online here.

Learn even more from the movie Gasland at a screening on Thursday, August 5 at 6:00pm, at Artists Image Resource (AIR), 518 Foreland Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15212.   Gasland is not on DVD yet but you can see the trailer online here and watch an interview with the movie maker, Josh Fox, on PBS Now.

It breaks my heart to see bad water.  My heart breaks even more when good water turns bad.

Thanks for listening.

(photo by Caitlin Mirra via Shutterstock)

p.s. There will be another screening of Gasland, Aug 27 at Frick Park.  For information see: http://www.marcellusprotest.org/aug27gasland

On my hike yesterday in Butler County I walked through gamelands near Slippery Rock Creek. 

Years ago the area had deep coal mines, then strip mines, but the coal companies never had to clean up or pay for the mess they made.  There are tailings piles everywhere and severe acid mine drainage, a big problem that’s hard to fix.  The water seeping from underground is bright orange and sometimes has an oily sheen. 

At the lake I found mud flats that could have attracted shorebirds but the water and land are bright orange.  Nonetheless two juvenile birds — a killdeer and a spotted sandpiper — were working the mudflats looking for food. 

I felt bad to see them there.  Was the water going to hurt them?  And what could they possibly be eating?

A flock of cedar waxwings gave me a hint on the shorebirds’ food source.

At this time of year waxwings supplement their all-fruit diet with insects they catch on the wing.  The flock was flitting low over the orange water and hawking insects out of the air.  I couldn’t see the insects but swarms were courting above the water, unaware that it was not a suitable place to lay their eggs.  The swarms made a bonanza for the waxwings and explained what the killdeer and sandpiper may have been eating. 

Thanks to the waxwings for showing the way.  I didn’t feel so bad for the shorebirds. 

(photo by Steve Gosser)

p.s. I love how waxwings feed berries to each other during courtship.  Steve Gosser snapped this photo at just the right moment.

In May I often walked to work through the heart of Schenley Park to get my morning dose of birds.  As I always do I took notes on what I saw — long lists of birds with asterisks for new arrivals. 

On May 6 my notebook has nine short words with a circle around them, “Found nearly dead ash tree.  Possible EAB.  Oh no!”

“EAB” is shorthand for emerald ash borer, a deadly bug that has wiped out North American ash trees since it arrived in Michigan in 2002.  Other than treating single trees with systemic pesticide there is nothing that can stop this bug.  It spells doom for parks and forests. 

I learned the signs of EAB from April Claus on a January walk through Sewickley Heights Park, so I was pretty sure of my diagnosis.  But someone more skilled than me needed to investigate.

It took me a week to tell an expert because I left town on a five-day birding trip.  When I returned I kept an eye out for people working in the park.  As it turns out the first person I found was one of the two best people to tell:  Phil Gruszka, Director of Park Management and Maintenance for the Pittsburgh Park Conservancy and a certified arborist. 

He teamed up with City Forester David Jahn (the other best person to tell) and they looked through the park and took bark samples from several trees.  News of their efforts appeared here under “Eagle Eyes in Schenley Park” on the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy blog. 

Months passed.  I didn’t think about emerald ash borers.  Then last weekend I found another tree with even more striking symptoms and emailed Phil with the location of this new tree.  He wrote back, “We are confirming it in many locations now.  Schenley Park is hard hit, Riverview Park is not far behind.”

Oh no!  Schenley Park’s ash trees are doomed.  Oh so sad!

(photo of an Emerald Ash Borer, with size reference and trunk damage, from the Florida Dept of Agriculture and Consumer Services.  Click the photo to see its original in context.)