On icy winter afternoons, just before sunset, intrepid birders gather at Pittsburgh’s Point where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers form the Ohio. Dressed in their warmest clothes they stand around on the ice gazing through their scopes and cameras. On January 31, Tim Vechter was among them and took these pictures.
Whatcha lookin’ at?
Gulls.
While the weather is icy, the gulls stay in Pittsburgh.
Each evening the flock starts small. Birders wait and watch as the gulls gather. Among the thousands of ring-billed and hundreds of herring gulls there’s bound to be a couple of rare birds from the Arctic. Maybe an Iceland gull or …
That evening Tim photographed two rarities including this glaucous gull (facing away with his head turned) identified by his bulky build, white wing tips and pink legs. Herring and ring-billed gulls have black wingtips.
Bilateral gynandromorph northern cardinal (photo courtesy Western Illinois University)
This northern cardinal has a birth defect that made it both male and female. The right side of its body is female, the left side is male.
This cannot happen in humans because our sexual characteristics are determined by hormones but in birds each cell has a sexual identity that’s determined early in embryonic development.
On rare occasions something goes wrong during the first cell division and an individual bird is born a bilateral gynandromorph. In other words, side-to-side (bilaterally) exactly half the body is female (gyn) and the other half male (andro). The dividing line is always vertical from head to tail. To understand how this happens, read this 2010 blog post on bird chromosomes: Anatomy: W and Z
In bird species where males and females look the same it’s hard to tell this has happened but in sexually dimorphic species like the northern cardinal or evening grosbeak, it’s easy to see.
This particular cardinal from Rock Island, Illinois is now famous because he-she was studied extensively by Professor Brian Peer and Robert Motz of Western Illinois University. Their findings — “Observations of a Bilateral Gynandromorph Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)” — were recently published in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology and featured in Science magazine.
One week from today — February 13-16 — the Great Backyard Bird Count will take a real-time snapshot of the birds in North America and beyond.
Since 1998 the Great Backyard Bird Count has enlisted volunteers like us to count the birds we see for four days in mid-February. We count them in our backyards or anywhere we choose. Last year more than 142,000 volunteers tallied birds in 135 countries. Most of us count in North America so the northern cardinal and dark-eyed junco were the #1 and #2 birds. Click here to see which species was #3.
Counting is so easy you can participate from your kitchen window! Just fill your feeders, sit back with a cup of your favorite beverage, and tally the highest count of each species for at least 15 minutes. Then submit your observations online. Don’t be daunted. It’s really easy. Click here for instructions from Cornell Lab.
Winter is more than halfway over. We turned the corner on Groundhog Day.
As spring sunlight increases, birds’ hormones trigger courtship and territorial behavior.
Northern cardinals feed peacefully together during the winter but soon the males won’t tolerate each other. Click here to read about their spring behavior in this blog post from 2008: Cardinals See Red.
With very cold weather on its way tomorrow it’s hard to believe that in three to four weeks ice will start to break up in southern Pennsylvania and ducks will begin to migrate north. When they do, they’ll be in an amorous mood.
Last month Cornell Lab eNews featured this video of courtship behavior in mallards, king eiders, common goldeneyes and red-breasted mergansers. Watch the video and you’ll learn their moves before their return in early spring.
When the ice breaks up goldeneyes will throw back their heads and “crow.”
As I mentioned in my post about St. John, USVI, there are no corvids in the Virgin Islands. In fact there are no crows, jays or ravens in Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles but there is a bird who fills their niche.
The pearly-eyed thrasher is the size and shape of a normal thrasher but he’s not a skulker like the brown and Crissal thrashers of North America. Instead he acts like a blue jay: bold, brash, adaptable and inquisitive. Conspicuous in flight, he lands with a thud and hop-turns on his perch. He calls in public and his youngsters beg loudly.
Like corvids, the pearly-eyed thrasher is omnivorous and opportunistic. He eats fruit, insects and vertebrates including eggs, nestlings, lizards, land crabs and tree frogs. He’s even earned a reputation for “stealing” because he’s willing to wait and swoop in when humans turn their backs at meal times. The thrasher below was photographed at a restaurant in the British Virgin Islands “just waiting for the waitress to leave the area so he could enjoy the remains of breakfast left on the tables.”
And like any corvid, he’s willing to peck an animal he thinks he can kill.
Last Friday during the Francis Bay bird walk our National Park Service guide, Laurel, looked around a corner and suddenly called, “Thrashie! Thrashie! He’s pecking a baby iguana!” She rushed to the iguana’s rescue and the thrasher flew up to watch his prey.
Laurel showed us the green iguana which was about the same size as the thrasher.
Here the iguana is a blur as it tries to get out of her hand.
Laurel hid the iguana among green leaves and we moved on to watch the black-necked stilts, leaving the pearly-eyed thrasher behind.
Who knows what happened next.
(Pearly-eyed thraser photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals. Iguana photos by Kate St. John)
Dawn at Concordia, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands (photo by Kate St. John)
When I visited St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands with Keystone Trails Association last week, I expected it to be different from Pittsburgh but I was surprised at how different it is from North America’s Atlantic coast.
The Virgin Islands are mountainous like Acadia National Park or the Canadian Maritimes, but they’re steeper and their peaks are sharp because they were never scraped by glaciers.
The view from Drunk Bay, a rocky beach at St. John, USVI (photo by Kate St. John)
Here’s how steep it was: I climbed 135 steps from our Concordia Eco-Resort cabin to the upper parking area where this photo was taken. By Day Two the drivers in our group always fetched the cars and picked us up at the flat end of the boardwalk below. Whew!
Steps at Concordia Eco Resort above Drunk Bay, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands (photo by Kate St. John)
The climate is both dry and humid with a daily high of 81 degrees F in late January. The tops of the mountains are moist and forested. The lower elevations resemble southern California with cacti and succulent plants. Here’s a view at Salt Pond where the water is saltier than the ocean.
At Salt Pond Trail, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands (photo by Kate St. John)
81 degrees F sounds comfortable but the dewpoint is always 70+ degrees so it felt hot as soon as the sun came up. Because I don’t like heat, my favorite time of day was dawn and my favorite things were:
The wind. Unlike North America’s prevailing west wind, the Virgin Islands have a strong east wind — the Trade Winds that brought Europeans to the West Indies.
The sound of the breakers at Drunk Bay. Our cabin was perched high above boulder-strewn Drunk Bay where the sound of the breakers lulled me to sleep.
The views. The islands are spectacularly beautiful with steep green mountain peaks and turquoise water. My photos don’t do it justice.
And there are beautiful white sand beaches. Trunk Bay, below, is rated one of the top 10 beaches in the world.
Turquoise water at Trunk Bay beach, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands (photo by Kate St. John)
Most amazing of all were these differences in bird life. At St. John I found …
No flying flocks. I was amazed not to see any flocks in flight.
No gulls at all. According to a local birder, the laughing gulls return in April but that’s about it.
Few fishing birds. Magnificent frigatebirds were most numerous (I saw five at once, soaring up from their roost), followed by royal terns (three) and brown pelicans (two).
Few shorebirds. Except for resident black-necked stilts at Francis Bay there were only single shorebirds at most locations.
No corvids. No ravens, no crows, no jays.
No vultures. They sorely needed vultures but this niche seemed to be filled by rats, feral cats and mongooses all of whom were imported to the island.
Few birds of prey. I saw one red-tailed hawk and a few American kestrels.
Eventually this all made sense. The lack of fishing birds matched the lack of fishing boats. I suppose there are few catchable fish at St. John. Perhaps the coral reefs protect them.
If you like heat and sun and warm Caribbean water you will love St. John, USVI. It’s a very different place from Pennsylvania.
_RWD6.jpg)
