Outside My Window

It used to be that wild animals avoided human contact but that’s not true in Pittsburgh anymore.  We have hawks, wild turkeys, foxes and deer in the city.  Not every animal can cope with city life but the individuals who can tolerate close human approach are doing quite well in our parks and cemeteries.

Sharon Leadbitter visits Allegheny Cemetery often and frequently saw this doe and fawn last summer.  They weren’t tame but they learned that Sharon isn’t dangerous. This was reinforced for the fawn every time it met a human and Mom said “It’s ok.”

Fawns are born in May in Pennsylvania so by now this baby is an adult and it’s mother has a new fawn.  I’ll bet this doe will let Sharon meet her new fawn, too.

And there will probably be four deer this year.  This doe plus her new fawn, and this fawn (now an adult) plus her fawn.  That’s how easy it is to end up with a lot of deer.

(photo by Sharon Leadbitter)

After a quiet winter this week’s warm weather has brought out the raccoons.

On Monday I heard a strange noise above my head in Schenley Park.  Two raccoons were arguing high in a tree.

Then late at night I heard the scratchy sound of raccoons disagreeing in my back yard.  Safe indoors, my cat looked in the direction of the sound but was unimpressed.

Fortunately we don’t have a cat door or we might have had a visitor like the one in this video… !

(video from YourDailyFunny on YouTube)

This post is totally off topic — not about birds or nature — but it’s so funny that I laughed and laughed.

I have a cat and I have a computer.  Thus far I have avoided acquainting my cat with the printer.  The video shows why.

(video by mihaifrancu on YouTube)

Nature observers and webcam lovers!  Here’s an opportunity to go on a virtual safari and contribute to science from the comfort of your home.

The University of Minnesota has been studying lions in Africa’s Serengeti for over 45 years.  Several years ago, in an effort to determine the population of other species in lion country, they installed 225 motion-detection cameras to record all the animals, both day and night, that pass by the study sites.

They now have thousands and thousands of photographs that contain an animal of interest … but which animal?   And how many?  And what are they doing?  Are there Wildebeest? Zebras? Serval cats?  Eland?  Guinea fowl? Grant’s gazelles (above)?

The task of identifying and counting the animals in so many photos was too huge for just a few people so they teemed up with Zooniverse to launch the Snapshot Serengeti website. It’s a citizen science project and you can help.

Visit snapshotserengeti.org to see the photos.  Try the tutorial. Learn how to identify the animals and how to use the clues for animals you’ve never seen before.  Then checkmark three items: what species, how many, what they’re doing.  Click Finish and you’re onto the next photo.

Of the two Zooniverse projects I’ve tried so far I like this the best.  At first I wasn’t very good at wildebeest vs. eland vs. buffalo but I quickly got better.  I could really tell I’m a “bird person” when I was excited to see two guinea fowl, and then a secretary bird!

Try it yourself.  Sign up at www.snapshotserengeti.org, sign in and you’re off on safari!

(screenshot from Snapshot Serengeti)

Adult human adults have 32 teeth — if none have been extracted.

Opossums have 50 teeth!

Possums (Didelphis virginiana) are small mammals with little mouths but they’re loaded with teeth.

What could they possibly be chewing that they need 50 of them?

Imagine their dental bills!  

(photo from Shutterstock)

Somehow I missed Raccoon Nation! when it premiered on PBS NATURE last February but Oh, my! I watched it online last week and I can hardly wait to see it on the big screen when PBS re-broadcasts it on Halloween.

I’ve already learned that raccoons are the smartest animal in the urban jungle.  They’re relatively small (so it’s easy to hide), nocturnal, omnivorous and adaptable.  They learn from their mothers and they can get into anything because they have thumbs.

I’ve seen this in my city neighborhood:  a mother raccoon guiding her kits to shelter, the sound of racoons arguing over my neighbor’s bird feeders at night, the shadows of ‘coons raiding my bird bath.

There’s not a garbage can they can’t open.  They’re ready for any challenge.  And our attempts to outsmart them make them smarter!

So of course I’m going to pull up a seat on Wednesday October 31 at 8:00pm and watch Raccoon Nation! in living color on WQED. 

I can hardly wait. On Halloween the animals will wear masks.

(photo from PBS NATURE)

As winter approaches our local wildlife looks for safe, dry places to take shelter from the cold.  Eastern screech-owls use hollow trees, dense foliage and holes in upright structures.

Last year Bill Powers of PixController set up an eastern screech-owl roosting study with five owl boxes in a dry wetland in Westmoreland County.  Each box is equipped with a small infrared video camera and small microphone wired back to a server that detects motion and streams video.

You can watch all five owl boxes at PixController’s Eastern Screech-Owl webcam page.

When it turned cold last weekend, Bill’s cameras detected motion as an owl checked out two of the boxes at dawn on Saturday.

Here’s the owl staring up at the infrared camera in Box #1 where he eventually roosted.  There’s no color because the light is infrared.

Knowing which box to watch, Bill put up a blind on Saturday and took the owl’s picture when he emerged at dusk.  He’s the handsome screech-owl in full color above.

Last night I tuned in at 9:00pm. There were no owls but I found a squirrel in Box #4, rearranging his tail and wrapping it around his body to cover his nose.

Won’t he be surprised if an owl shows up this morning!

Visit Bill’s PixController Screech Owl website to watch the cameras.  Click here for more information on the camera setup and a map of the cam locations.

(photos by Bill Powers and PixController, Inc.)

p.s.  If there are no owls when you take a look, come back when it’s colder.  Bill tells me the owls use the boxes more often when it’s 30^oF.

October’s a good time to take in fall foliage and the autumn activities of Pennsylvania’s wildlife.

If your travels take you to Elk County, stop by the Visitor Center on Winslow Hill Road in Benezette to see Pennsylvania’s elk.

You might get lucky and find them in the parking lot, as Paul Staniszewski did above.

On the other hand, elk are pretty busy right now and more likely to be in their natural setting.  This is their mating season.

Click here for Elk Country information and here for Paul’s guide to photographing elk … when they’re not in the parking lot.

(photo by Paul Staniszewski)

p.s. Today I’m hiking at the Quehanna Wild Area in nearby Clearfield County. The fall foliage is colorful but it is *cold*! The growing season just ended with 23 degrees this morning.

Today, we’ll have some fun with this video starring meerkats.  But first, just one educational paragraph.

Meerkats are a small type of mongoose that live in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa.  Their bodies are about a foot long, their tails even longer, and they weigh 1.6 pounds.  Meerkats live in social groups of 20-30 individuals most of whom are siblings, offspring of the alpha pair who make sure they’re the only ones in the troupe allowed to breed successfully.

Other than the serious business of foraging and competition, meerkats are pretty funny.  For instance, they fall asleep.

This video combines some of the funniest clips from four documentaries on meerkats with the Overture to Carmen by Georges Bizet.

Have a laugh.  Happy Friday. 

(video by MeerkatGal  from YouTube)

For many years Paul Staniszewski has photographed Pennsylvania’s elk herd near Benezette, Pennsylvania, often with beautiful and impressive results such as this photo of a bull nicknamed “Attitude.”

But he hadn’t been able to capture a good photograph of a newborn calf … until last month.

Paul sent me the picture above and wrote,  “Since I have been photographing elk, I was never able to get a decent shot of a new born elk calf.  There always seemed to be some problem: the calf was too skittish, the grass was too tall, the mother was being too protective, the light was not good, and etc… Well on this occasion [June 12], I finally was able to get what I consider to be a perfect photo of an elk calf that was born just hours before.”

As you can see, elk calves resemble white-tailed deer fawns.  What you can’t tell by the picture is the calf’s size.  Adult elk are 3-4 times larger than white-tailed deer and their babies are too.  Elk calves weigh 30 pounds at birth compared to newborn fawns at 4-10 pounds.

You might think a baby this large would be easy to see, especially since elk live in a herd, but the mothers go off alone to give birth and they are very protective of their young.

An elk cow doesn’t have antlers, but she’s not something you want to tangle with.  She weighs about 500 pounds, stands 4.5 feet tall at the shoulder and is 6.5 feet long from nose to rump.

She’ll charge at you if she thinks you’re a threat to her baby.

That’s why her newborn calf is a rare sight.

Thanks to Paul Staniszewski for sharing his photos. For more views of Pennsylvania’s elk and information on photographing them, see his website here.

(photos by Paul Staniszewski)