Outside My Window

This was supposed to be my big day for visiting the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch near Central City, PA but the weather in the mountains and in northern Pennsylvania is dreadful right now.

Yesterday’s news of 4.5 inches of snow in State College — and more on the way — sent everyone scrambling to cancel outdoor activities across the state.  Here in Pittsburgh where it’s cold and rainy today’s neighborhood cleanup was canceled too. 

Everything is on hold.  So is migration.

I hope the birds who are waiting out the storm survive these days of bad weather.  It will be hard for them to find something to eat under all that snow. 

(photo of snow damage in State College by Jesse Ferrell, linked from his Accuweather community blog site.  Click here for more of Jesse’s photos of the State College snowfall.)

Winter is coming.  Orion the Hunter is back. 

Hidden all summer, the Orion constellation is visible again in our southern sky.  I first noticed him last week, just before dawn. 

You can pick out his features in the photo at left.  The line of three stars in the middle is his belt, the vertical line below that is his dagger and the four stars at the four corners mark his shoulders and knees. The unusual red star at his top left shoulder is Betelgeuse.  Click here to see how the Ancient Greeks made this pattern into a hunter.

Orion lies on the celestial equator so he’s visible in each hemisphere in winter. He’s one of my favorite constellations but truth be told he’s one of the few I can see.  My neighborhood is bad for star gazing due to city lights and Pittsburgh’s frequent cloud cover.  If the Ancient Greeks had seen as few stars as I do, they wouldn’t have named so many constellations.

Right now Orion is in the south but by January he’ll be at his best.  Meanwhile he has a special claim to fame this month.  On October 21 the Orionid meteor shower will flash in the space between Orion and Gemini, above and left of Betelgeuse.

So keep looking up.  Even at night there’s always something to see.

(photo linked from University of Arizona Astronomy Department.  Click on the photo to see it in its original context)

No, I’m not talking about football.  I’m talking about staying warm. 

The weather has been getting colder every day for a week.  This morning it was in the upper 30s at dawn.  By now most of you have turned on your heat, but not us.  We’re toughing it out until we get a new furnace.  The old one won’t turn on and rather than pay to fix it I thought we could cope until the furnace man comes on Friday.

This plan has resulted in a couple of “learning experiences.”  

First, we’ve learned that 60 degrees feels great outdoors but when you’re inside it’s like Antarctica, especially when it was summer last week.

On Tuesday I was really crabby and could not figure out why.  Eventually I put on my coat (though I was indoors) and suddenly felt fine, even happy.  I was crabby because I was cold.

We’ve discovered which rooms are warmer and are spending our time there.  So why is the basement warmer than the living room?  Cold air should be falling to the basement – and it is – but the water heater is running more often and its metal exhaust vent warms the room enough to make a difference.

And finally, we’re huddling.  We huddle at night just like the ducks in this picture and our cat finds a crack to sleep between us.  Emmy seems so affectionate right now.  I hope she remembers to love us when the heat’s on.

(Ducks in a huddle from Shutterstock)

Raccoon Creek was quiet and ice covered.  After weeks of bitter cold weather I was enjoying a day of 55-degree temperatures at the Wildflower Reserve.  There weren’t many birds yesterday but it was nice to be outdoors.

I watched the muddy water flow through an ice-free channel while I ate my lunch.  After two warm days the creek was high and made soft gurgling sounds as it passed under the remaining ice.  Peaceful.

Then crack! Boom!  Upstream a large slab of ice broke free, crashed into a submerged tree and jammed.  More ice joined it, spinning in the flow.  The pressure cause a big section to break free and scrape the shoreline with an ugly tearing sound.  

Chunks from the breakup floated down to a small jam in front of me.  When they reached the blockage their back ends tipped down, their noses tipped up, they flipped over, submerged and were sucked under the ice sheet.  I watched them pop out on the other side and bob downstream.

This was fun, but it didn’t last long.  The entire channel soon filled with ice.  The water rose rapidly and flooded the shore, then the ice rose too, buckled and broke.  Jam and break, break and jam.  The amazing thing was that all this action was water against water: liquid against frozen. 

I’m glad the episode at Raccoon Creek was small.  This morning’s news reported an ice jam on Neshannock Creek in Lawrence County where three people were rescued from the rising water. 

(photo of an ice jam on Raccoon Creek on February 8, 2009, by Kate St. John)

Last night it snowed then sleeted then rained.  It’s still raining, but so cold it’s turning to ice.

This morning I looked out the back window to see how the bird feeders were doing and found a network in the snow. 

What’s this?  I went out to investigate. 

All the lines originated from a hole under the sidewalk and grew outward like a tree toward the bird feeder.  Subnivean mouse trails! 

Subnivean means “under the snow.”  The mouse came out last night and tunneled to the feeders.  Under the snow he stayed warm and relatively safe from predators while he munched down on fallen seed.  Until today I didn’t even know he lived there because his trails in powdery snow aren’t as visible, but this morning the ice and rain made his tunnel roof transparent.  Way cool!

Many animals live under the snow all winter.   If you click on the photo, you’ll see a diagram of subnivean life in the arctic.  Here in Pittsburgh we don’t have snow cover all winter so the activity is intermittent. 

Want to hear more?  Here’s an audio story from New Hampshire Public Radio.

(photo by Kate St. John… using my cell phone.)

As I write this it’s -4 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 Celsius).

Fortunately there’s a nice covering of snow to protect the plants and small animals, but we and the birds operate in the air - where it’s coldest.

Years ago I knew a woman named Louise Reiley who was a missionary nurse in Alaska and China more than 50 years ago.  She had many stories about the successes and hardships of her time abroad but there was one thing she said that stuck with me:  ”Hot and cold are a state of mind.”

Louise explained that if you thought “warm” when it was cold, you wouldn’t feel the temperature.  She said it really worked.  I have never been able to do it.  Instead I compensate by wearing layers. 

Today it’s going to take a while to get dressed:  tights, corduroy jeans, ski pants, two layers of socks, boots with felt linings, undershirt, turtleneck, wool sweater, parka with hood, boola scarf, hat, glove liners, mittens.  When I’m done I can barely walk and can’t see my feet without bending over, but I don’t feel the cold. 

I’m lucky I don’t have to stay outdoors all the time.  Birds do, so today will be especially challenging for them.  They’ll fluff out their feathers to make their down hold more heat and they’ll eat a lot.  If they don’t get enough to eat, they’ll die.

So bundle up and fill your bird feeders.  Let’s all think “warm.”

(photo of a Pine Siskin and American Goldfinches by Marcy Cunkelman)

Just now we’re having two days of winter. 

On Thursday it drizzled, rained and poured heavy snow-filled drops.  Miserable weather but excellent for ducks as Dan Yagusic discovered when he found, among other things, two long-tailed ducks on the Allegheny River.   

It was a lot of rain – so much that it flooded the Monongahela parking wharf - but the rain changed to snow overnight and coated everything white.

I was stir crazy from staying indoors so I walked to work on Friday and took this picture in Schenley Park.  Not an inspiring photo, but you get the idea.   As if we needed to be convinced it’s winter again, it was 17 degrees last night. 

Today it’s clear, sunny and bright.  The snow may stay through this afternoon but it’ll certainly melt tomorrow when the temperature climbs into the 50s again. 

I shouldn’t complain.  I’ll be doing the Buffalo Creek Christmas Bird Count tomorrow and will appreciate the warmth.  But I really do prefer winter white.

It’s one of those days when it looks nicer outside than it really is.   The wind is blowing hard from the north but the sun is out so the birds and squirrels are at my feeders. 

It’s a good day for staying indoors with a cup of hot chocolate.  I know this because I took a walk at Duck Hollow this morning.  It’s sheltered from the north so after seeing hundreds of gulls, some hooded mergansers and a lesser scaup I walked along the river trail. 

There I found a flock of cardinals, carolina chickadees and white-throated sparrows eating Oriental bittersweet berries.  This invasive plant seemed to be the only abundant bird food along the trail – except for the birds themselves.  A red-tailed hawk eventually caught one of them. 

I rounded the bend in the river.  Now the wind was in my face but there was a surprise overhead.  Two flocks of tundra swans flew over.  Woo hoo!

By then I was thoroughly cold so I hurried home for lunch and the comforts of home - and to look outside my window.

(photo by Kate St. John, taken from my back window)

I couldn’t let this day pass without commenting that we have yet another day of absolutely blue sky in Pittsburgh.  It looks just like that blue square at left (which is actually a picture of the sky).

Without a single cloud, it’s pretty hard to see migrating hawks.  I’m sure they’re up there but there’s no way to see them in a sky this blue.

OK, so I’m asking for clouds.

I’ll live to regret this request next month in gray November.

Compared to the Great Plains and the coasts, Pittsburgh is not a windy place.  Our typical wind speed is 5-10 miles per hour and some days there’s no wind at all.

Gentle breezes are the norm, so you’ll understand why one of my favorite sounds is the swish of wind in the leaves.  Their rustling is so soothing that it actually improves my day to hear it.

Because I love this sound, I began to care whether the leaves were on or off the trees.  About ten years ago I started to keep track.

First I developed a rough standard for measuring “on” and “off.”  Then, using my neighborhood and Schenley Park as yardsticks, I watched the seasons change and tried to pick the date when most of the trees were bare.  Over the years that date has been around November 11th. 

Of course the date is very weather dependent.  If a strong cold front comes through early, the wind and rain strip the trees.  If the weather’s mild and our first hard frost is late, the leaves hang on longer.  I’ve seen the date move later in recent years.

In any case, the days of leaves are numbered now.  It won’t be long before the trees are bare.  Then silence, except for the clacking of bare branches during winter storms.

(photo from my cell phone)

November 9, 2008:  Today is the first day this fall that most of the trees are bare.