Outside My Window

Hiking is one of my favorite pastimes combining exercise, the outdoors, peace and quiet, and birds.  Winter weather and lousy footing kept me out of the woods for the past few months so I’ve been itching to get out for a real hike.

Last weekend I kicked off hiking season with a visit to the Armstrong Trail at Rosston.  It was so beautiful I had to take this picture. 

The Armstrong Trail runs for 52.5 miles along the Allegheny River from Schenley to East Brady on the path of a former rail line.  I hiked two sections:  Rosston to Logansport and Kelly to Godfrey.   Here the trail is maintained but rough and often paved with coal dust, a heritage of its coal-mining past.

Rosston and Logansport were especially good for birds.  In early spring migrating waterfowl find the river a welcome stopover when the lakes are frozen.  Last weekend Lake Arthur at Moraine State Park was still 90% frozen so no wonder the birds were at the river.

At Rosston, Crooked Creek empties into the Allegheny and is protected by a downstream island.  I could see wood ducks and ring-necked ducks feeding in the island shallows. 

The river was high and the flats at Logansport were flooded so the trees were up to their ankles in water.  Here I found many more wood ducks, ring-necked ducks, a gadwall and a few horned grebes.  One horned grebe was so close I could see his red eyes.

A curious part of the landscape at Kelly and Godfrey are the abandoned 1850’s beehive coke ovens.  They look like a line of big holes in the forested hillside (pictured at right).

It was very quiet on the trail last weekend but I could tell by the tire tracks and the signs saying “No ATVs” that ATVs use the trail extensively and are unwelcome.  Sadly, this means I won’t be visiting the trail when the weather is good and the ATVs come out.

I love white birds!  And I especially love big flocks of white birds, so I always try to visit Middle Creek in early March.  It’s the biggest migration spectacle in Pennsylvania.

Every year in the first two weeks of March, snow geese and tundra swans stop at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area near Kleinfeltersville, PA on their way to the Arctic.  If the weather’s just right, up to 180,000 snow geese and 8,000 tundra swans will be at Middle Creek when you arrive.  It’s HUGE!

There is no way a picture can adequately capture the beauty of this spectacle.  The first thing that strikes you is the sound - a lake filled with white birds and the sound of a crowd.  When the snow geese take off all at once, the roar sounds like a cheering crowd in a packed stadium.  Their sight and sound and vibrant life fill the sky. 

Sometimes the snow geese settle on the lake again.  Sometimes they fly away in loose Vs that become wavy lines in the distance.  Either way it’s as if the sky is moving.  The snow geese are a total sensory experience.

The tundra swans are calming.  In the morning they stay on the lake much longer than the snow geese, preening and calling to each other with melodious “whoo-ing” sounds.  As each flock gets ready to leave, they swim in V formations, hum to each other and bob their heads.  At take off they call loudly and run on the water to become airborne, then immediately form lines and Vs as they gain altitude.  To me, everything the swans do is beautiful.

The best times to visit Middle Creek are the two hours at dawn and dusk.  I always arrive before dawn and walk to Willow Point because I don’t want to miss seeing the geese leave. 

The geese and swans aren’t the only attractions.  This past Sunday I lingered in the parking lot to put on my gloves when a short-eared owl flew past my car - back and forth - and then pounced in the weeds and came up with breakfast.  Wow!

After a couple of hours standing in the cold you too might want some breakfast.  I hear the Kleinfeltersville Hotel and Tavern has good food.  I like to stop at Mel’s Diner on Cumberland Street in Lebanon (Rt 422 West, nine miles away via Rt 897) because they have homemade raisin bread.  

For directions to Middle Creek click here.   Don’t miss the Visitors Center (open Feb 1 until Thanksgiving, Tuesday to Saturday 8am-4pm and Sunday noon-5pm) where you can see displays of the birds, get maps and information.  On busy weekends you can buy food at the Visitors Center, courtesy of local Boy Scouts or churches.

Both photos are by Joe Kosack, PA Game Commission.  The top photo is tundra swans taking off.  The lower photo is a flock of snow geese.

No birding trip to Central Florida is complete without a visit to Merritt Island, home of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and thousands upon thousands of birds. 

Chuck, Joan and I visited it a week ago to look for Florida scrub jays, painted buntings and roseate spoonbills (spoonbills photo by Chuck Tague). 

Heavy rain moved in from the north so our trip was abbreviated but we managed to stop at Palm Hammock Trail, Haulover Canal, Black Point Drive and the Visitors’ Center before it poured.  We couldn’t find any painted buntings - hungry mosquitoes chased us away! -  but I loved seeing an adult peregrine falcon, American avocets and my favorite pink bird: roseate spoonbills.

Merritt Island is a magical place so we were dismayed to learn that all of this beauty may soon be gone, its fate decided in the next six months.

NASA is proposing two possible sites for a 200-acre commercial space launch area.  Both sites will have an impact on wildlife but Site 2 would close all the places we visited including the Visitors Center.  No more visits to Merritt Island!

Because of federal budget issues, NASA is worried their Florida operation will be eliminated so the commercial launch site is being touted as a typical jobs-versus-environment argument.  What is lost in this discussion are the jobs generated by the 500,000 to 750,000 visitors per year who come from all over the world to see Merritt Island’s wildlife.

Last week there were public meetings in Titusville and New Smyrna Beach where NASA laid out their plans.  NASA owns the land and can take it back at will.  Their schedule for doing so is here.

For more information about the project and its impacts, see http://environmental.ksc.nasa.gov/projects/ksc-cvlc.htm. 

You can influence NASA’s site decision by submitting your comments to the address below.  You can also help by spreading the news to others who love Merritt Island. 

Send comments to:

Mario Busacca, Environmental Program Office
Mail Code TA-C3
Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899
Telephone: 321-867-8456; FAX: 321-867-8040
E-mail: KSC-CVLC@nasa.gov 

I keep a list of the birds I’ve seen but I’m not particularly driven by it.  Last Sunday I found out how little I consult my list when I saw a life bird and didn’t realize it at first. 

If I’d known that I’d never seen them before, I would have made a bigger effort to find the Ross’s geese who’ve been visiting Allegheny County since early January.  Here they are, photographed by Geoff Malosh.

After these unusual geese spent two weeks in the North Hills, Dan Yagusic reported them roosting at Six Mile Island in the Allegheny River near Sharpsburg.  They’d made it to my home zone so I went to see them. 

Ross’s geese are very beautiful - like small snow geese with stubby bills and rounded heads.  They are unusual in Pennsylvania because they nest in the arctic – primarily at Queen Maud Gulf Migratory Bird Sanctuary – and migrate to California’s Central Valley and, to a lesser extent, to Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico.

Our three geese are probably a family group who strayed too far east.  Fortunately, they found a large flock of Canada geese who know where to roost and feed so they’ve stayed safe by hanging out with them.

Compared to other geese that nest in the same arctic region, Ross’s geese are the last to arrive at the spring nesting grounds and the last to leave in the fall.  If our weather holds, we may have these special geese in Pittsburgh for a while longer.
 

What a cold night!  Temperatures in the single digits!  Again I thought of how the birds are coping with cold. 

Chuck Tague’s beautiful picture of Canada geese made me wonder how they can swim in near freezing river water and stand on ice for hours.  It turns out that birds have special adaptions to keep themselves warm.

Feathers are one big advantage.  Not only do they naturally conserve heat but the feathers closest to a bird’s skin are downy.  Birds fluff their feathers to expand the down when the weather’s cold, making the little birds look like butterballs.

You can see the effect of feather insulation at this link showing infrared photos of a parrot on a person’s arm.  The person’s arm looks “hot” but the parrot’s body looks “cool” because its feathers are such good insulation.

Another cold weather advantage for ducks and geese are their waterproof feathers and a layer of fat under their skin.  The fat keeps them warm in cold water and their feathers keep them dry.

This leaves the problem of warming their feet.  Birds can tuck a foot up under their feathers but this is impractical for very long.

So how can geese stand on ice in their bare feet?  Water birds have an unusual circulatory system in their legs and feet.  The veins and arteries in their legs are intertwined so that cold blood leaving their feet is warmed by the arteries delivering warm blood.  (Open the comments below for a more accurate explanation from Dr. Bledsoe of Univ of Pittsburgh.) 

Perhaps this means birds’ feet are a little colder all the time, but it doesn’t bother them.  The advantage is that their central body doesn’t have to cope with cold blood returning directly to their hearts.

We humans don’t have these advantages so my feet are mighty glad they’re indoors right now.

I mentioned this phenomenon on PABIRDS and got a huge response so I decided to go into more detail here.

On Sunday at Moraine State Park (Fine Weather For Ducks) I heard a frog-like sound coming from the area where the ducks were swimming.  Using Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website I figured out the sound came from the hooded mergansers.  The male is pictured at left, the female at right, by Chuck Tague.

According to Cornell Lab, hooded mergansers are silent except in courtship when the male gives a deep rolling frog-like sound, recorded here at the end of the clip. 

Amy Taracido says their voice sounds like “merg merrrrrrrrg” - a perfect description and one that makes me laugh when I say it.

Besides the sheer amusement of hearing a bird make this noise, it’s curious that this is considered a courtship sound.  We generally assume birds don’t court in the winter, so from our perspective the hooded mergansers cannot possibly be courting on December 9th.  But why not?  Why does courtship have to be confined to spring? 

The flock was large and about 50/50 males and females.  On migration southward, the hooded mergs might be in “dating” mode, especially the young ducks who haven’t bred yet.  Flocks would be the perfect place to meet the opposite sex and decide on a mate.  Mergansers might even need some get-acquainted time before they make a choice.

So I guess Lake Arthur is The Bar Scene for ducks.

…but not so fine for humans. 

I went to Moraine State Park today because I read on PABIRDS that the edges of the lake were frozen, so the ducks would be concentrated in one area and easy to see. 

As I arrived at the lake the first bird I saw was a beautiful red-shouldered hawk - a good omen - then a family of four tundra swans who flew away almost immediately.  I had been waiting to see tundra swans since early November.  Finally!

There were many ducks on the lake: common and hooded mergansers, horned and pied-billed grebes, ruddy ducks, buffleheads, ring-necked ducks, greater scaup, redheads, canvasbacks, gadwall, and mallards. 

Best Birds were the canvasbacks.  They have three crisp colors - white, black and rusty red – and a long sloping forehead and bill.  The canvasback pictured here was photographed a few years ago by Chuck Tague at the South Side landing.  (It is unusual to see them in the city.)

In field guides, canvasbacks and redheads are on the same page because they look similar.  Today I had the opportunity to compare them and they are noticeably different, even from a distance, when you see them side by side.
 
After standing in the cold for an hour I thought I’d go hiking but it began to rain and the fog closed in.  It was good weather for ducks but pretty depressing for a hike, so I went home.