Flock of white doves (photo from Shutterstock, 2012)
20 July 2026
Rock doves (Columba livia) were domesticated 5,000 to 10,000 years ago and are still kept today worldwide for a variety of reasons including food or fancy show breeds, and especially for their homing instinct.
Homing pigeons (yes Columba livia) are specially bred for navigation and speed and can fly home from a place they’ve never seen up to 600 miles away. This makes them valuable for carrying messages, taking part in races and in white “dove” releases at weddings and funerals.
For a wedding dove release the pigeons are transported in cages to the launch point. When released they circle up, form a flock, figure out their current location and the direction of home … and they’re off!
This dovecote is at Dundurn Castle in Hamilton, Ontario. When we visited the park in early July I immediately noticed the tiny dormers on the roof. Aha! Pigeons used to live here. Built in 1835 by Sir Allan Napier MacNab, 1st Baronet, he kept pigeons as messengers.
The photo at top shows the worst day in the Niagara Falls area as seen in St. Catharines on Wednesday 15 July. Pittsburgh’s worst day was Friday the 17th, shown in the video below.
The source is nearly 1,000 forest fires in northern Minnesota and western Ontario, most of them at least a 1,000 miles away. Across the continent there are many, many more. Here’s what’s burning in North America this morning according to NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System US/CANADA map.
… shown on the PurpleAir map(*), Friday 17 July 2026 at 6:42am EDT. I’ve made it tiny so you won’t confuse it with today’s map. Click on the image for a larger view.
Happily the air cleared Saturday at noon and air quality improved into the Orange zone (considered a high rating but alas fairly common Pittsburgh’s Mon Valley). I went out for a walk and, though it was nice to be outdoors, it was so humid I dripped with sweat.
Today’s air quality should be even better, right? Nooooo! It’s in the Red Zone.
This wildfire smoke comes to us on upper level winds that pass over the fire area before they reach us. (Wildfire smoke has risen that high!) This wind map from earth: a global map of wind, weather and ocean conditions shows the jet stream coming from the fire zone this morning (7:18am) and dipping south to reach us. Pittsburgh is the black dot.
On Saturday upper level winds were coming from the Great Plains so our air was better. (I’ve added a wobbly green arrow to Saturday’s map to point this out. Pittsburgh is the black dot.)
So I’m hoping the jet stream will wobble and give us good air. Then we’ll breathe easy.
And… a Huge Debt of Gratitude to Hudson Valley Weather on Facebook for their excellent description of the origin and persistence of the fires and upper-level transport. Their Facebook post is well worth a read.
p.s. (*) PurpleAir’s interactive map has a dot for each air quality monitor providing realtime data to their network. Some of the dots are government AQ monitors but most are individuals and organizations like GASP that want/need to know the air quality in their area.
Asiatic dayflower, Schenley Park, 11 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
18 July 2026
Before the smoke came to town I went on a long walk in Schenley Park and around the neighborhood this week. The captions tell the stories.
Flowers and a cooperative young rabbit in Schenley Park on 11 July.
Smoke-free sunrise on 12 July.
A lovely tiny weed in the cobblestone cracks + a deer eating her way through a front yard on Bayard Street, 13 July.
A dinosaur statue being repainted, photographed in media res on 2 July and complete on 14 July. (I prefer the 2 July version.)
Bindweed with insects, Schenley Park, 11 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)Young rabbit, Schenley Park, 11 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)Sunrise before the smoke, 12 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)Tiny pretty weed in the cracks, Japanese mazus, 13 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)Doe browsing on Bayard Street, 13 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)Doe browsing on Bayard Street, 13 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Wildfire smoke in Pittsburgh before sunset 16 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
17 July 2026
Yesterday while I wrote about the raging wildfires in western Ontario, 1000 miles from Pittsburgh, their smoke was blowing in our direction. By 8:00am yesterday I could see it as faint haze. By sunset it had turned the sun orange. The smoke was so thick that John English did not need a filter to photograph the sun, complete with sunspot.
Sun in wildfire smoke, Homestead, PA, 16 July 2026 (photo by John English)
Since then the air has gotten worse and is dangerous for everyone.
The PurpleAir monitor network shows a large swath of hazardous air (maroon color) from Western Ontario through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Its path is amazingly well defined on the northern edge where you need only drive 50-60 miles to escape the smoke (green). I’ve drawn a white line at that edge. Click on the screenshot for a closeup of the white line. Click to see the live PurpleAir monitor map. Zoom in on their map to see the details.
GASP 06 Monitor in Allegheny County at 17 July 2026 8:01am
Observations:
Distant landmarks outside my window have disappeared. Notice the water tower in the sunrise picture is gone today.
Sunrise, 2 June 2026, 6:02am. Hills and water tower visible in the distance
Wildfire smoke in Pittsburgh, 17 July 2026, 7:20am. Nothing visible in the distance
I have seen very few birds flying. No hawks, no finches, no sparrows. Three chimney swifts came out this morning to check the air and went back to their roost. No swifts flying now.
Having lived in the Mon Valley airshed, I am all too familiar with the smell of Pittsburgh’s bad air. Yesterday it I was momentarily amazed the air does not smell like sulfur.
Indoor air quality is better that outdoors, but not best. Yesterday afternoon at 4pm I turned on my air filter and found out we were in the Red Zone. I’ve left it running since.
Indoor air quality on 16 July 2026, 4pm (photo by Kate St. John)
On the ground it is frightening. My first view of it was this raw footage from a Canadian National Railway (CN) freight train trapped by fire near Armstrong, Ontario. The engineer is on the radio calling for help. WARNING: THIS RAW FOOTAGE CONTAINS AN UNCENSORED WORD.
Peregrine falcons eat birds for a living and leave the remains behind, usually just feathers and bones. Every once in a while they eat a banded bird and if we’re lucky the band remains on the gravel at the Pitt peregrine nest. Can we identify who they ate?
Right now there’s a small blue metal band near the green perch that’s been on the gravel for about a year, disappearing and reappearing at random.
It cannot be read in a closeup but it looks like a homing pigeon band (racing or wedding dove). It’s uncommon for the Pitt peregrines to catch a homing pigeon but I’ve seen it before.
About 15 years ago during a Pitt peregrine banding, Art McMorris pointed out a homing pigeon band that he’d retrieved from the nest. I volunteered to track down the pigeon’s owner. At the time it was pretty difficult. Each pigeon owner affiliates with a pigeon association and each association has its own band listing. You have to decipher the Association Code before you can begin.
I was having a hard time getting anywhere until it dawned on me that the last 10 digits on the band looked like a phone number. So I called it and immediately reached the pigeon owner in northern Indiana.
He told me that the bird was part of a Young Bird race — hatched 3.5 to 4.5 months earlier — that started in southern Indiana. It should have flown north about 200 miles. Instead it flew northeast about 400 miles — twice as far — before it stopped. It apparently had a compass error so it was totally unsuitable for racing. He did not mind that a peregrine ate it.
At the Center for Conservation Biology they monitor peregrines that nest throughout Virginia including at the James River Bridge at Newport News. Bryan Watts tells the story of prey bands found in peregrine nests. It’s interesting to note that Eastern Shore peregrines eat a lot of shorebirds, some of which have flag bands
(timelapse photos of Photinus pyralis in flight. fly left, fly right from Wikimedia)
14 July 2026
Last night after sunset I sat on a park bench and watched fireflies (a.k.a. lightning bugs) in my city neighborhood. I could tell by their flash patterns that they were Photinus pyralis, the common eastern firefly, because the males glowed while ascending in a J shape. Females flashed from the tips of grasses to attract a mate.
You can see both behaviors in this video by Radim Schreiber at fireflyexperience.org.
The combination of color, flash and pause pattern, and flight path are unique to each species(*). Notice how different the flashes are for this species, the cypress firefly.
There’s a famous problem that humans get wrong almost all the time but pigeons get right. It’s called the Monty Hall Problem, named after the TV host, co-creator and co-producer of television’s Let’s Make A Deal. It works like this:
There are three closed doors, one with a prize behind it, two with goats. Suppose you and the pigeon both pick Door #1.
Monty asks you, “Do you want to stay with your choice of Door #1 or do you want to switch?”
Well, it looks like you have a 50-50 chance of winning so you stick with Door #1. This is a losing strategy. Pigeons switch doors and win 2/3 of the time.
Pigeons get it. Humans don’t. This video explains how switching doors works best. I see the statistics, but my gut still comes up with the wrong answer.
In today’s social media climate rumors spread quickly and persist despite the truth. This is nothing new in human history. When Francesco I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, died of a fever at age 46 in 1587, the rumor mill said his younger brother Ferdinando had poisoned him. The rumor lived on, even though Francesco’s doctors said he died of malaria.
Where did human malaria come from? DNA solved the mystery in 2020 by examining the similarities of Plasmodium in primates to Plasmodium falciparum.
They found at least nine species of Plasmodium, three unknown before. When compared to human P. falciparum, the most closely related came from western gorillas from Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo. In fact one was nearly identical to all known human plasmodium sequences.
P. falciparum only had to jump once and it became ours. Thus it is no surprise that Africa is a malarial hotspot. It stays that way because it takes a lot of money to eradicate malaria, money that many African countries do not have.
In the end, the change of power benefited Tuscany’s citizens. Francesco (the guy who died of malaria) was often despotic, heavily taxed his subjects, and sent the money to Austria. Ferdinando who succeeded him was a benevolent ruler who cared about the welfare of his people. He re-established the justice system and returned prosperity to Tuscany.
Albion Falls in fog, Hamilton, Ontario, 5 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
However at ground level there were beautiful water droplets on all the plants. Many of them “weeds” but all looked gorgeous. Top to bottom:
Perennial sow thistle
White sweet clover
Common salsify
Gray dogwood berry stems shrouded in cobwebs
Tartarian honeysuckle berries
White sweet clover in fog, Albion Falls, Hamilton, Ontario, 5 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)Common salsify in fog, Albion Falls, Hamilton, Ontario, 5 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)Gray dogwood, mostly eaten berry bunch shrouded in cobwebs and fog, Albion Falls, Hamilton, Ontario, 5 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)Tartarian honeysuckle berries in fog, Albion Falls, Hamilton, Ontario, 5 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Back in Pittsburgh I see deer every day now in my neighborhood. These two are munching a garden on Neville Avenue — a 6-point buck in velvet with a doe. They are a persistent couple.
Muching a garden: 6-point buck in velvet with doe, 10 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
