This week the temperature stayed above freezing (until this morning) and set a record 85ºF on Wednesday. On a walk in Schenley Park last Saturday 1 April I saw coltsfoot in bloom, Virginia bluebells in bud and flowering Norway maples.
By the end of the week the city’s Norway maples had bloomed enough that their profiles looked like green balls instead of stick trees. You’ll can see this on the slope of Mt Washington as viewed from Downtown or the Bluff.
By mid week it was sunny and HOT.
On Wednesday 5 April I visited the Lake Trail at Raccoon Creek State Park to find newly arrived Louisiana waterthrushes (). Near one of the singing birds was a puddle of trilling and mating American toads. I recorded their sound and added a my (lousy) photo of mating toads + a Wikimedia photo of the Louisiana waterthrush when he sings in the recording. You can also hear the wind on the mic.
Also at Raccoon: spring beauty () and yellow corydalis (). I wish I could have stayed longer.
Though the next two days will feel like summer in Pittsburgh with highs of 72ºF and 82ºF, the hummingbirds will not be back yet. Where are they now? When will they get here?
Our only hummingbird, the ruby-throated (Archilochus colubris), has a wide breeding range in eastern North America and a narrow wintering range in Central America and the southern tip of Florida.
Thanks to Hummingbird Central’s spring migration map, we can see that a few daring individuals flew north inside Florida in February but most migrants showed up in Central/North Florida and on the Gulf Coast in early March. By now, 4 April, the leading edge of hummingbird migrants has covered central and coastal North Carolina and has a foothold in southeastern Virginia.
Today’s hummingbirdcentral.com snapshot shows the gap between Pittsburgh and the leading edge of hummingbirds.
Will they reach Pittsburgh this month? Yes, one or two brave ones, but I predict the big push won’t get here until early May. My eBird sightings of ruby-throated hummingbirds in Frick/Schenley Parks consistently shows first arrivals on May 2-4 for the past five years.
13 May 2012
… gap of 6 years …
4 May 2018
4 May 2019
3 May 2020
3 May 2021
2 May 2022
(Go ahead, hummingbirds. Prove me wrong and arrive early!)
On Saturday before the storms I saw my First Of Year eastern phoebes (Sayornis phoebe) in Schenley Park while Kathy Saunders found a first Louisiana waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) at Tom’s Run Nature Reserve. Two tail-waggers are back in town.
Few birds wag their tails side to side but we do call it “wagging” when they bob or pump their tails up and down. Eastern phoebes are subtle about it but the movement is almost constant and it draws our attention.
What makes phoebes wag their tails faster? Predators! Sibley describes a 2011 study of black phoebes:
Avellis concludes that tail pumping is a signal meant to send a message to the predator. It tells the predator that the phoebe has seen it, and therefore the phoebe is not worth pursuing.
Louisiana waterthrushes don’t just wag their tails. They continuously bob the entire back end of their bodies by moving their ankle joints. Birds’ ankles are the backward “knees,” the middle joint on their legs, hidden by this waterthrush while he dips his butt.
His bobbing is like a habit he just can’t quit.
Louisiana waterthrushes have a different reason for tail wagging than eastern phoebes and they hold their technique in common with another April migrant, spotted sandpipers.
In case you missed it, here’s why they “wag” their tails.
Every autumn humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) migrate past California on their way to spend the winter off the coast of Mexico. They will linger, however, if they find lots of anchovies. Humpback whales love anchovies.
There were still lots of anchovies when the whales showed up this fall. Robin Agarwal took a whale watch out of Monterey Bay in early October and captured these scenes of lunge-feeding humpback whales.
The anchovies crowded close as the predators approached. The whales forced them to the surface where the tiny fish leapt out of the water to escape.
The whales opened their mouths and anchovies fell in.
(humpback whale photos in Monterey Bay by Robin Gwen Agarwal on Flickr, Creative Commons license, food photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)
A yellow-throated warbler (Setophaga dominica) would not be rare in Pittsburgh in early May but to see one in Canada in December is amazing.
This bird was photographed in St. John’s, Newfoundland on 9 December by Phillip (Felip1).
It’s not a very sharp picture but enough to identify him: a Yellow-throated warbler. He showed up for some suet early this morning.
I was half-expecting him. He had been visiting a suet feeder a couple of hundred metres away from us a few days ago. And one of the flickers had chopped up lotsa suet for him from the suet holder above. Those flickers are pigs but the other birds appreciate it.
Even though it is mid-December, the weather’s been mild and there are a half-dozen warblers who have apparently decided to try their luck to spend the winter around this town, St. John’s, Newfoundland, when all their relatives decamped a couple of months ago for more southern climes.
Pennsylvania is typically the northern limit of the yellow-throated warbler’s range and it’s a short-distance migrant to Florida and the Caribbean. St. John’s, Newfoundland is not even on the map (red arrow points toward it) but Newfoundland is about as far as Florida if you’re migrating from PA in the wrong direction.
The presence of this bird, one of half a dozen warblers in St. John’s in December, might be an after effect of Hurricane Fiona … and might not.
In any case its splash of yellow is a happy sight on a dreary day.
(photo by Felip1 on Flickr, Creative Commons non-commercial License)
In mid November hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American robins (Turdus migratorius) were in the east end of Pittsburgh but left abruptly when the weather dropped below freezing on November 18th. By the 21st it was 17 degrees F and the robins were long gone.
Robins can cope with cold weather but not with frozen ground so they stay just south of the freeze line as winter approaches.
eBird distribution maps for June-July and December-February show that robins vacate the north to populate temperate zones in winter. June-July is dark purple with robins everywhere except for the hottest southern U.S. In Dec-Feb they’re concentrated in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast including Florida.
Robins were on the move here in November. Now they’re south of us, wrapping up.
(photos by Robin Agarwal and Douglas on Flickr via Creative Commons license; click on the captions to see the originals)
Over the Thanksgiving weekend 6 greater white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons) showed up in western Pennsylvania — four in Lawrence County and four in Armstrong County.
Though they breed in the arctic around the world, the North American population stays west of the Mississippi. These geese are rare in Pennsylvania.
Their “greater” and “white-fronted” adjectives don’t make much sense unless you know the species they resemble in Europe.
They are “greater” because they are larger than the lesser white-fronted goose (Anser erythropus) that occurs only in Eurasia and is now Vulnerable to extinction.
They are “white-fronted” because they have white feathers on their faces surrounding their beaks, a field mark that distinguishes them from the similar greylag goose (Anser anser), another Eurasian species.
Only a handful of greater white-fronted geese are seen in western Pennsylvania in any given year, and then only in late October through early March.
If you see a goose that resembles this one check its field marks carefully. It may be an odd domestic goose, described here:
(images from Wikimedia Commons, map embedded from allaboutbirds.org)
This week Charity Kheshgi and I saw ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis), a common merganser (Mergus merganser) and a few pied-billed grebes (Podilymbus podiceps) at Duck Hollow. All three species visit the Monongahela River in November when freshwater freezes up north.
The common merganser gave us an opportunity to mentally compare her field marks to a similar bird. Here are some tips.
Female common and red-breasted mergansers are so similar that it takes some practice to tell them apart. Charity’s photos show the common merganser’s two unique field marks:
A sharp demarcation between dark head versus white breast / gray back.
A sharply defined white under-chin.
Notice the common merganser field marks in three photos.
Female red-breasted mergansers (Mergus serrator) lack those sharp lines. The colors blend from one to the other.
Note that the presence of a head crest is not a reliable difference between the two; both can display it.
So here’s a quiz: Which species is in the photo below? Are these common or red-breasted mergansers?
In September the Finch Research Network’s Winter Finch Forecast predicted that evening grosbeaks and pine siskins would irrupt southward this winter. In the past week Pennsylvania Rare Bird Alerts reported 55 sightings of evening grosbeaks and 11 of pine siskins in the state. Some are in western Pennsylvania right now and both are seed-eaters so you might see them at your feeders. Here’s what to look for.
Evening grosbeaks are big bulky finches, larger than northern cardinals, that are shaped like rose-breasted grosbeaks. The male is bright yellow with black accents and white wing patches. When you see him at your feeder you’ll fall in love.
The females and immature males are not as striking but still beautiful. In bright light they look like enormous goldfinches with fat necks and big beaks.
On gray days the females and immatures look drab but unmistakable for their size and huge beaks.
Evening grosbeaks love sunflower seeds so keep some on hand to attract any that might be flying over. Doug Gross says they also love these wild foods: Seeds of box elder, ash, elm, tulip poplar, hackberry, pine, spruce, larch. Fruits of cherries, apples, crabapples, poison ivy, hawthorn, juniper (red cedar), Russian olive.
This PA map shows where evening grosbeaks have been reported in eBird this month through 20 Nov.
Pine siskins resemble female house finches but are warm brown in color (not gray-brown) and have sharp pointy beaks with a faint touch of yellow on their wings. They often hang out with goldfinches.
They love niger at the feeder and pull seeds from alder and arborvitae cones.
Though petite in size, pine siskins strenuously defend their feeder perches against other birds. Here one shouts at a male house finch.
Keep your niger feeder filled and look hard at those goldfinches. This PA map shows where pine siskins have been reported in eBird this month through 20 Nov.
Watch your feeders for two rare birds. You may get lucky!
(photos by Steve Gosser, Lauri Shaffer, Tom Moeller and from Wikimedia Commons, maps from eBird; click on the linked captions to see the originals)
This week’s first snow on 15 November brought in the “snowbirds,” an influx of juncos from the north and higher elevations. Kathy Saunders had fifteen at her feeders while it was snowing on Tuesday afternoon.
Our slate-colored juncos look so crisp and clean: Sparrow-like with dark eyes, pink beak, no stripes, charcoal gray head and back and wings, and a white belly — the “clean little coveralls” described in William Stafford’s poem Juncos.
My bird feeder is filled with juncos today so I thought of this William Stafford poem. pic.twitter.com/c3mBrAX4uu
Even though juncos have color variations all the birds with dark eyes are the same species: dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis).
This vintage blog from 2015 lists some of the subspecies, shows off a yellow-eyed junco (different species!) and describes a subspecies hybrid found in Pittsburgh last February.