Has there ever been a software update on your computer or cellphone that you really hate?
Aaarrg! My phone nagged me to reboot after auto-update, and now I hate how it works!
The update broke my favorite app!!!
Why did they hide the one feature I use every day? Where did they put it?
The old app I love doesn’t work anymore after system update. Now what?
I know I’m supposed to run updates but they always break something.
These reactions are quite normal and they have a name: Baby Duck Syndrome.
In human–computer interaction, baby duck syndrome denotes the tendency for computer users to “imprint” on the first system they learn, then judge other systems by their similarity to that first system. The result is that “users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems”.[24] The issue may present itself relatively early in a computer user’s experience, and it has been observed to impede education of students in new software systems or user interfaces.
We often imprint on our first software just like baby ducks imprint on the first moving thing they see. This is probably how we humans are wired for survival. When we learn a tool that works we don’t want to give it up.
Imprinting isn’t dumb and it isn’t dumb to imprint. This video explains why.
There’s a group of tropical birds in the Western Hemisphere whose lives are so closely intertwined with ants that their names include the word “ant” —> Antbird, antshrike, antvireo, antthrush, antpitta, ant-tanager, antwren. These birds don’t eat ants. Instead they follow army ant swarms to eat small prey the ants scare out of hiding. Ant-named birds are not the only ones who do this.
About 462 species of birds opportunistically feed near army ant swarms. Within this group, 16-29 species require army ants for their livelihood and don’t hunt without them. These obligate army ant followers would die of starvation if there were no army ants. The ocellated antbird (Phaenostictus mcleannani), shown at top, is one of them.
The most reliable way to see antbirds is to find foraging army ants but first you have to know something about the ants.
Army ants form nomadic colonies of 10,000 to 10 million ants. Since they have no fixed home they gather in a bivouac, a defensive interconnected “ball” with the queen, eggs and larvae in the middle surrounded by workers and soldiers.
… then they fan out over the forest floor and plants.
Because army ants have extremely poor vision they use their sense of smell to detect each other and sense of touch to detect their prey. As they fan out they touch everything with their antennae. If something moves it’s prey and they immediately surround, attack and dismember it. Word to the Wise: If you are out ahead of an army ant swarm and it catches up to you, Don’t Move!
Watch ant swarms, birds and researchers at work in this video from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. It begins with two blue morpho butterflies winking in the forest. And then the ants and birds show up! (The video lasts 10 minutes. If you don’t have that much time the first 3-5 minutes will show you a lot.)
Doing anything special for Presidents Days weekend? Staying at home? Taking a walk? Going to somewhere warm? No matter where you go you’ll have four days of great excuses to go birding.
Count birds at your feeders or anywhere outdoors and anywhere on Earth. The Great Backyard Bird Count is global.
Spend time in your favorite places watching birds—then tell us about them! In as little as 15 minutes notice the birds around you. Identify them, count them, and submit your counts to help scientists better understand and protect birds around the world. If you already use eBird or Merlin, you don’t have to do anything special. Your submissions over the 4 days count toward GBBC.
Crows staging at Schenley Park golf course, 20 Nov 2024 (photo by Betty Rowland)
9 February 2026
This morning when I saw a distant flock of crows stream from the roost to the Mon River valley I knew the winter crow party was still having fun. Local groundskeepers and building managers are thinking “murderous” thoughts about the roost but now, just when humans have had enough, the crows will naturally disappear.
While the days are getting longer, crows think about going home to breed. In March they will act on it, the roost will dissolve, and the party will be over until next November.
To explain what’s happening, let’s look at their annual cycle in southwestern Pennsylvania. The crows’ New Year begins in Spring.
Southwestern PA crow calendar, breeding and wintering (chart by Kate St. John)
All year long established pairs stay in family groups with their kids.
In March established pairs migrate home to breed and new pairs migrate to find a territory. In spring an established family group is parents + youngest kids (usually a group of 4; the kids are helpers). New pairs in their first breeding season have no kids yet (a group of 2).
March to June — on territory — is the secretive phase of crow family life. They are quietly busy building a nest, incubating eggs, hatching young, and feeding them in the nest. Crows don’t want you to know they are there. They seem to be completely gone.
When crow nestlings fledge in late May/June they are loud! Suddenly crows are obvious.
July to August crow families remain at home while the youngsters learn. (Family groups of usually 6 crows.)
September kicks off fall migration and overwintering time.
September to October crows migrate slowly south to their overwintering site. Eastern crows travel an average of 287 miles to the site. What places could they be coming from that are 287 miles away from Pittsburgh? Two examples: Kingston at Lake Ontario and Barrie, Ontario near Lake Huron, both in Canada.
November to February: Let’s Party! Crows gather at the winter roost. The roost may move around during that period.
In March it’s time to go home.
Enjoy the crows in mid-latitude cities now before they’re gone.
Prothonotary warbler at Magee Marsh, 2014 (phoot by Chuck Tague)
8 February 2026, Pittsburgh
When this morning dawned at -6°F (-21.1°C) it was hard to imagine spring but I really want to. What better way to “Think Spring” than to talk about warblers?
Last month on the Road Scholar birding trip to Costa Rica we saw 15 species of warblers, the majority of which (8) were northern migrants spending the winter in Costa Rica. The rest (7 species) are residents of Central and South America and many of them are related to North American breeding warblers.
North American migrant warblers seen in Costa Rica, January 2026
In just 2-3 months — in late April and early May — warblers currently in Costa Rica will start arriving in Pittsburgh. Six of the species we saw look the same year round so they were at their best. The most numerous warbler on our trip, the Tennessee warbler, as well as the bay-breasted warbler were still in non-breeding plumage. They didn’t look as snazzy.
See the list and links below the slideshow.
Northern waterthrush (Wikimedia)
Golden-winged warbler, Carondelet Park, 2020 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Black and white warbler (photo by Lauri Shaffer)
Prothonotary Warbler (Wikimedia)
Tennessee warbler (Wikimedia)
Bay-breasted warbler (photo by Robin Argawal, Flickr CC license)
Northern yellow warbler (photo by Steve Gosser)
Chestnut-sided warbler, August (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
The other seven species on our checklists are residents of Central and South America. Just one reaches into North America as far as Mexico. See the list below the slideshow.
Best warbler on the trip? Prothonotary! We often saw them when touring the mangrove and wetland forests by boat. They were a bright flash of yellow as they flew across the river in front of us.
p.s. Speaking of low temperatures, Pittsburgh will have an amazing warm-up starting tomorrow, Monday 9 Feb 2026, at 7:00am. The low at 7:00am Monday will be -6°F. The high at 2:00pm on Tuesday will be 44°F. That’s a 50 degree temperature swing in just 31 hours. It will feel like Spring!
Starlings … Poof! … Pittsburgh, 30 Jan 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
7 February 2026
Since returning home late last a week, I’ve seen a lot of old snow.
In a walk on 30 January a flock of starlings burst off a tree near the Shakespeare statue at Carnegie Music Hall. Shakespeare had old snow in his lap.
The sidewalks were easy to navigate but the crosswalks were blocked by icy piles of plowed snow.
London plane trees in snow, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, 30 Jan 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Old snow on the roofs and a pink sunset.
Old snow on the roof at sunset, 30 Jan 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
Last week I saw Bobcat Skid-Steer Loaders all over the city moving snow to out of the way places. This pile on Flagstaff Hill probably came from Frew Street. By the end of the week the crosswalks were clear.
Pile of snow moved from street to Flagstaff Hill, 2 Feb 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
But we were worried that yesterday’s predicted snow would bury us again. The National Weather Service said it would be a “fast moving clipper.”
The snow squalls hit last night around 10pm. A whiteout at 10:15pm. Light snow and better visibility just four minutes later.
Snow squall, 6 Feb 10:15pm
4 minutes later
And this morning, less than an inch of new snow in the city.
With more snow on the way today in Pittsburgh we need something to take our minds off our troubles. Sea otters are the perfect solution.
Sea otters live among kelp because they eat the organisms that eat kelp. They dive to gather sea urchins, sea stars, sea cucumbers, crustaceans, a variety of mollusks, snails and bivalves. Then they float on their backs with their food set on their bellies as they open and eat their prey.
Understory birds in Costa Rica’s rainforest are often streaked, spotted and striped for camouflage while they move in dim and dappled light near the forest floor. Out of all those streaky birds I have seven favorites from my trip to Costa Rica last month. Six are forest skulkers, the seventh, shown at top, is not an understory bird at all so I don’t know why he’s striped. NOTE: These photos are not to scale; almost all of them are from Wikimedia Commons.
The best way to see a fasciated tiger-heron is to check the edge of a rushing stream. We found two fishing in the Sarapiquí River at Selva Verde Lodge. Obviously the stripes do not camouflage them in this setting. Maybe those stripes are for a different reason.
This species posed nicely for us. He also posed for his Wikimedia Commons photo below.
The Fasciated Antshrike forages, mostly for large insects, in the midstory of tropical lowland forest. He’s found in vine tangles and dense mid-story canopy.
I saw this Life Bird during the Sky Walk at Arenal while there was a pause in the pouring rain. He was on my Wish List.
The streak-crowned antvireo ranges from Honduras through Nicaragua to Costa Rica, living in the understory and mid-story of lowland and foothill evergreen forest. He forages for insects and is often in mixed species flocks (paraphrased from Birds of the World).
Frequent–though not obligate–followers of mixed-species foraging flocks that track insect-flushing swarms of army ants across the forest floor.
The Spotted Antbird’s scientific name means a “spotted watcher of the woodland.” In Panama’s Darien province the species is locally known as ‘corregidor‘ (mayor) for its apparent behavior of directing the activities of other birds found with it, presumably at army ant swarms.
What a skulker! This bird is said to be common but it is very hard to see.
Generally common. Found in a wide variety of wooded habitats, including second growth and plantations, where it forages, apparently for insects in low tangles and other dense vegetation.
The Stripe-breasted Wren has two distinct singing ‘styles’, which are sufficiently at variance to sound as if they were made by completely different types of birds. The first is a series of whistles on the same pitch, somewhat like the calls of a small owl, which song, usually given at dawn, is typically given by a single bird. The second is a series of up to ten bubbling whistles, which is far more typical of the Troglodytidae, and is given in a duet.
When this wren turns his back on you, you can’t see him. If he hadn’t shown his chest I would never have known he has stripes. No photos from the trip; all I have are happy memories. These photos are from Wikimedia Commons.
American barn owl at the supermarket in Las Iguanas, Costa Rica, 26 Jan 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
4 February 2026
While in Costa Rica with Road Scholar on 26 January: On our way to Arenal we needed some snacks and bottled drinks so we combined a visit to the grocery store with a stop for barn owls. Yes, there were barn owls at the grocery store.
Inside the building it was a typical supermarket with a wide selection of food.
Road Scholars checking out at the grocery store, 26 Jan 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
However, there was a ledge close to the roof peak and on that ledge was a pair of American barn owls (Tyto furcata).
Barn owls perched up high at the grocery store, 26 Jan 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
I digiscoped the front-facing owl (at top) but the second owl was harder to see. Gary Levinson-Palmer captured these photos.
Barn owls at the supermarket, Costa Rica, 26 Jan 2026 (photo by Gary Levinson-Palmer)
Because there was sunlight behind them, I believe the owls come into a gap between the roof peak-section and the main roof. These gaps are needed for ventilation and heat reduction. Here’s an (exaggerated) example from Wikimedia Commons (not in Costa Rica).
The hiatus occurred when the eagles moved away from Hays (and the old camera) at the start of the 2025 breeding season. They didn’t move far — just across the river and upstream — but their new nest wasn’t found on the Glen Hazel hillside until April. By then there were already two chicks in the nest so it was too late to install a camera. Thankfully PixCams immediately began planning to install a streaming camera in time for this year.
Bald eagle breeding season runs January through July in Pennsylvania so you’ll often see one or both eagles at the nest now. The PixCams YouTube video below, captured yesterday morning at 8:40am, shows the female at the nest when the male arrives with a big stick.
Glen Hazel (Hays) bald eagles add a big stick to the nest, 2 Feb 2026, 8:40am (video embedded from PixCams on YouTube)
