Outside My Window

On Saturday the featured Media of the Day at Wikimedia Commons was this audio clip of the “singing” sounds of an iceberg.

Click on the player and you’ll hear amazing squeaking and groaning noises.  At first you’d think it was the sound of a boat but soon you hear thumps,  snaps and grinding as the iceberg shifts.

If you don’t want to listen to all 4+ minutes of iceberg sounds, begin playing the clip and let the audio bar fill.  Then click on the bar at the 3/4 mark to hear some amazing roars and sawing noise.

Who knew that water could sound so industrial!

(audio from Wikimedia Commons.  photo by Kim Hansen from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original which was Picture of the Day on 29 June 2008.)

…Specifically, tundra swans!

Last week we were blessed by the sights and sounds of gorgeous white birds on their way from Canada’s Arctic coast to Chesapeake Bay and beyond.

Most of them didn’t stop but that didn’t matter.  They’re beautiful in flight.

Marcy Cunkelman had her camera ready as the flocks flew over her house.

Bye bye, swans.

(photos by Marcy Cunkelman)

As Hurricane Sandy blew through New York and New Jersey it picked up many sea birds and blew them inland.  Some rode the storm’s high winds, others were trapped in the eye of the hurricane and flew all night inside its calm center, waiting for daylight so they could see where to land.

By midday Tuesday, October 30 there were near blizzard conditions and 45 mph winds over Pennsylvania’s southern mountains as the eye of the storm hovered over Bedford County before turning north.  At this point many water birds dumped out of the storm onto Shawnee Lake where Mike Lanzone reported at least 10 unusual species including a black-legged kittiwake, American oystercatchers, a leach’s storm-petrel, and pomarine and parasitic jaegers.

Many storm birds flew home immediately but five days later these two juvenile black skimmers showed up in Pittsburgh.  As soon as Mark Vass reported them on the Ohio River at McKees Rocks, Pittsburgh area birders flocked to see them including Jeff McDonald who took these pictures.

Black skimmers (Rynchops niger) are quite common on the shores of Long Island and New Jersey at this time of year where they eat small fish from the ocean’s surface.  They capture them by skimming the water with their long lower mandibles.  You can see this odd beak as a bird casts a pellet below.

And here you can see one skimming.

But there might not be enough food for skimmers in the Ohio River in November.  In North America skimmers are strictly coastal birds because the sea serves up small fish every day, but in Pittsburgh the river fish drop into deep water in winter, unreachable by skimmers.

Now, a week later, there is only one black skimmer at the marina.

(photos by Jeff McDonald)

Fall migration brings waves of ducks through western Pennsylvania, so now’s the perfect time to learn more about them.

Next Wednesday, November 14 at 8:00pm PBS NATURE will premiere  An Original DUCKumentary, a delightful program about the birds who’ve mastered water.

The show opens as baby wood ducks hatch and prepare to leave their nest.  Their mother comes to greet them, then flies to the pond and calls.  Whoa!  She can fly but they must fall 70 feet to reach her!  No wings, just the will to join their mother, and off they go.  The first rule of a baby duck’s life:  Mom calls, we follow.

The baby ducklings learn and grow.  We see their tiny feet paddling underwater and slow motion video of their parents leaping from water into air.  And wow!  Their dad is beautiful!

That’s not all.  Ruddy ducks make powerful dives using only their feet.  South American torrent ducks master river rapids.  Common eiders literally fly underwater to reach the ocean floor.   And sprinkled throughout we meet the cutest baby birds on the planet — like this little redhead.

Watch An Original DUCKumentary on WQED, Wednesday November 14 at 8:00pm.  If you’re outside WQED’s viewing area, check your local PBS listings.

You’ll see ducks from a whole new perspective.

(photo from PBS NATURE, An Original Duckmentary)

In honor of the day here’s a critter whose name is Halloween.

Red land crabs, also called harlequin or Halloween crabs (Gecarcinus quadratus), are nocturnal burrowing crabs that live on the Pacific coast from Mexico to Peru. They spend their lives in sand dunes, moist forest or mangroves but they need the ocean to reproduce so they don’t stray far from shore.

From above these crabs look black and orange.  They’re even more colorful from the side.

Trick or Treat!

(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

p.s.  As Hurricane Sandy approached Pittsburgh on Monday many municipalities rescheduled Trick-or-Treat to Saturday Nov 3, so there will be no costumed kids at our door tonight. Kind of odd considering everything in Pittsburgh is just fine.  Not so in New York City where our nephew reports he was not flooded but has no electricity.

The scientific literature calls ring-billed gulls opportunistic omnivores or as the gulls themselves would say:

“We’ll eat anything and we’ll snatch it from anybody.”

Early this month Shawn Collins photographed this behavior when a gull caught some bread at Pymatuning Spillway.

The chase was on.

He was nearly overrun by the gang when …  ooops!  he dropped a big chunk!

The bread fell free for all of them.

The result was a free-for-all.

(photo by Shawn Collins)

Southwestern Pennsylvania’s waterways are scenic but in many places the water is bad.  This photo of the notch where Stony Run meets the Conemaugh River is a case in point.  See the orange tinge on the river bottom?  That’s bad water from abandoned mine drainage.

How prevalent is bad water in our area?

PittsburghTODAY recently published a map of non-attaining waterways in southwestern Pennsylvania.  Using Department of Environmental Protection data, the yellow lines show where water quality is compromised by abandoned mine drainage, agricultural runoff, sewage, and other causes.  The good water is blue.

Even in this thumbnail it’s easy to see that most of Allegheny County has bad surface water while most of Greene County is good.  The white space in the middle of Allegheny County is the City of Pittsburgh where the streams were buried as the city was built.  Click on the image to see the large map at PittsburghTODAY and drill in for a close-up.

The region’s bad water affects both our quality of life and the natural world.  Where water’s impaired aquatic life is poor, there are fewer fish, fewer birds, fewer mammals and bad water for us to drink.

So why is a lot of the map yellow?  It’s the legacy of coal.

During the heyday of deep mining in the early 1900′s Pennsylvania had weak or non-existent environmental laws and the state did not collect money from industry for clean up of the inevitable abandoned mine drainage.  Pennsylvania eventually enacted laws to prevent new damage but there’s no money to turn all of the yellow lines into blue.

One would hope that Pennsylvania learned from this history but in my opinion (not necessarily the opinion of WQED) our state has not.  Though damage is predictable from new industrial threats like Marcellus shale, the state still begins with weak laws, suffers new damage, then changes the laws after the damage is done.  (Click here for an example.)

So… how’s the water?
Sad.

(photo by Tim Vechter; map from PittsburghTODAY.org.  Click on the map to see the details)

It’s rare for me to see a Life Bird within a day trip of Pittsburgh but that’s because I hadn’t been to Conneaut harbor.

Conneaut, Ohio is on the shore of Lake Erie near the Pennsylvania line.  The harbor is protected by two long breakwaters whose arms reach out into the lake.  You can barely see them on Google’s satellite view but they protect the harbor and a large, sandy mudflat that’s grown between the boat launch and Conneaut Township Park.

Conneaut is excellent during migration so I jumped at the chance to join yesterday’s Three Rivers Birding Club outing led by Shawn Collins.

We saw thousands of gulls and about two dozen shorebirds.  One of them was this buff-breasted sandpiper, a bird I’d never seen before. He’s just slightly larger than a semi-palmated plover and very handsome with an almost innocent staring expression.

I love how he looks when he runs.

I traveled 142 miles to see him but he made a much longer journey to get there.  He flew about 2,500 miles from his Arctic summer home to Conneaut and is only 1/3 of the way to his winter home in Argentina at the Rio de la Plata watershed.

I feel privileged to have seen him.  Buff-breasted sandpipers almost went extinct in the 1920′s due to overhunting.  They recovered but are declining again and are listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN.

Thanks to Shawn Collins for leading the outing and for these beautiful pictures of my latest Life Bird.

(photo by Shawn Collins)

p.s.  A “Life Bird” is a species that you’ve seen for the first time in your life.

Last Wednesday in Maine I followed The Maine Birding Trail’s advice and visited Popham Beach State Park.

I arrived in the afternoon, two hours before high tide and just after the remnants of Hurricane Isaac had passed.  The wind was strong, the waves were enormous, and the shorebirds were crowded on the last bit of sand above the high water mark.

There was so little space for the birds that I could sit near two resting flocks of sandpipers and plovers — all semi-palmated — and watch them closely as they preened and slept.

At one point they all looked behind me.  Over the far sand spit a pale, juvenile arctic peregrine zoomed low and raised the shorebirds into tightly synchronized flocks that wheeled and turned as one.  The birds near me hunkered down and watched him try to split a bird from the flocks so he could close in and capture it.

But he was unsuccessful.  I watched too, torn between wanting to see him to catch a meal and feeling protective toward “my” shorebirds.

“My” flocks must have felt some borrowed safety in my presence.  Surely the peregrine wouldn’t hunt near a human — so they remained motionless with a wary eye to the sky, hoping that camouflage and my presence would be enough.

But the juvenile peregrine had other ideas.  Suddenly he made a pass close to us.  Some of the shorebirds flew to escape.  I stood up for a better look at the peregrine and he made a second and third pass right next to me!  At chest height!

By then I was cheering for the peregrine (I can’t help it), but my voice and enthusiasm were too much for him.  He left for the far sand spit and then flew away southwest along the coast.

Of course, I don’t have a picture of the peregrine at Popham … but you can get an idea from this photo.

(photo by Kim Steininger)

p.s. Yesterday Dorothy and E2 spent time bowing at their nest at the Cathedral of Learning. Soon the amount of daylight will be the same as in March when Dorothy lays eggs. Perhaps the light level reminds them of nesting season.

p.p.s. There were hundreds of monarch butterflies migrating last Wednesday at Popham — more than I’ve ever seen before.

Northern gannets were the most numerous sea bird on my whale watch trip this year.  Some were adults, some were juveniles, but few had the peachy colored head feathers of these breeding adults.

This pair was a lucky shot.  When the photographer took their picture they were mirror images of each other.

Posed perfectly. Frozen in time.

(photo by Des Colhoun via Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the photo to see the original, including a link to its geographic location.)