http://www.wqed.org/birdblog A Bird Blog with Kate St. John Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:07:19 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Very soon all the trees will be bare in my neighborhood.  This is already the case north of Pittsburgh. A week ago I visited the Clarion River in Jefferson County where I noticed all the trees were bare, even the oaks.  At the Allegheny Front last Sunday the leaves on the mountain ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/11/07/all-gone/ This morning the fog rose from the river and blanketed my neighborhood in frost.  Above the fog the sky is clear, the sun shining.  Both fog and frost will be gone soon. (photo by Dianne Machesney) http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/11/06/frost/ Tundra swans are on the move. Last Sunday at the Allegheny Front we heard three flocks whoo-ing overhead before we saw them very high above us, heading southeast to the Chesapeake.  That night I heard another flock pass over my house though I couldn't see them in the dark.  As their voices ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/11/05/swan-song/ The crows are back in town, raucous as ever!  Thousands flew over my house this morning. I was planning to use this photo to blog about them when I showed it to my husband and we started to laugh.  These crows look so much like a gang that my husband started ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/11/03/south-side-story/ Now that Halloween is over the holiday shopping season has officially begun. If you're like me you're hard pressed for gift ideas for friends and family and you might, like me, have a hard time answering the question, "What do you want for Christmas?" Fortunately I got a head start on this ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/11/02/ideas-for-nature-gifts/ If you've been watching this blog for a while, you know that one of Pittsburgh's peregrine falcon "sons" has spent the past 11 months in rehab.  Now, at last, Pittsburgh Pete has a permanent home.  This is quite a victory for Pete, and for Judy Bailey who rescued him. Pete (black/green ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/11/01/pittsburgh-pete-has-a-home/ Today's the day for spooks and ghosts.  Its colors are black and orange, the black of night and witches' hats, the orange of glowing embers and the harvest moon.  Why aren't our black-and-orange birds associated with Halloween?  Probably because Baltimore orioles, American redstarts and Blackburnian warblers are small and harmless and they've migrated ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/10/31/happy-halloween/ Because I like birds, people often describe a bird they couldn't identify and ask me if I can tell them what it was.  This week a request from my sister had me stumped for a while.  My sister's house overlooks a salt marsh in coastal Virginia.  From her back windows she ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/10/30/remote-bird-identification/ There's not much time left to prepare for winter, especially if you're a chipmunk. Eastern Chipmunks don't hibernate and they don't even fatten up in autumn like groundhogs.  Instead they stash a winter's worth of food in their underground burrows where they live from late October to early March (in Pennsylvania) in periodic ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/10/28/packing-it-in/ What was this downy woodpecker doing before she got nervous about having her picture taken?  She was eating those whitish berries. What are those whitish berries?  Poison ivy! This fall there's a good crop of poison ivy berries in western Pennsylvania and the birds are loving it.  I've seen large flocks of ... http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2009/10/27/food-for-birds-not-for-people/