Red-tailed hawk in Schenley Park, 14 Nov 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
17 November 2025
In Schenley Park …
A Hawk:
My friend Andrea and I were walking up the Lower Trail on Friday morning when she told me to pause. Right in front of us was a red-tailed hawk at eye level, hunting for breakfast. The chipmunks and squirrels laid low. When we walked past he flew up to the mossy branch pictured at top and resumed his hunt. All of these photos were taken with my cellphone; he was that close.
Red-tailed hawk at eye level, almost hidden, 14 Nov 2025
Red-tailed hawk at eye level, looks up
A Croc:
On Thursday the wind was so strong that it blew all the duckweed to the east end of Panther Hollow Lake, making it easier for ducks and geese to eat it. While Canada geese browsed the duckweed I noticed a small pink something … ? … near them. Shadows were in the way.
Canada geese eating duckweed on Panther Hollow Lake, 13 Nov 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Canada goose near the pink Croc floating on Panther Hollow Lake, 13 Nov 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
The Odd Duck:
Also on Thursday, Charity Kheshgi and I counted 3 mallards and The Odd Duck. She was paired with a male mallard so he knows she’s his type but what type is she?
A pair of mallards with The Odd Duck in the background, Panther Hollow Lake, 13 Nov 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)The Odd Duck with her mate in the background, Panther Hollow Lake, 13 Nov 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)The Odd Duck, Panther Hollow Lake, 13 Nov 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
We speculated that she was an American black duck X domestic duck hybrid, but in fact there are domestic mallard breeds that approach or match this plumage:
chocolate brown back, wings and head
warmer brown speckled undertail coverts and sides
white chest.
My guess is she’s a domestic duck escapee, perhaps a white domestic duck mish-mashed with a Dark Campbell or Cayuga Duck. She has doppelgängers in Kitchener, Ontario in 2018 and 2011. –> In the comments, Candy Morgan suggests she’s a Swedish Black Duck.
When my husband’s family lived in Harrisburg I liked to combine a Thanksgiving visit there with a stop at Conowingo Dam in Darlington, Maryland, five miles down the Susquehanna from the Mason-Dixon line and an hour and a half from Harrisburg.
Conowingo Fisherman’s Park is the place to be in late November. Migrating bald eagles congregate below the dam to scoop up fish that were stunned by passing through the gates. Competition is fierce between immatures and adults though there are enough fish for everyone.
Photographer Johnny Chen was there in November 2021 to film the action. You will love his 8-minute video. He slows the action during dives, shows real-time interactions between eagles, and includes an adult mantling over a fish while the black vultures pace around him!
A week ago Powdermill Nature Reserve posted a size comparison of a “sharpie” and a Sharpie. Before I show you their photo … How big is a sharp-shinned hawk (“sharpie”)? How big is a Sharpie indelible pen?
The sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus) is North America’s smallest accipiter with a total length of males 24–27 cm (9.5-10.6 in) and females 29–34 cm (11.4-13.4 in). The tail (for both) ranges 12–19 cm (4.7–7.5 in).
Let’s calculate the bird’s size using the smallest dimensions. Males are smallest. 9.5″ total length – 4.7″ tail = 4.8″ body.
Sharpie pen, measured on a ruler (photo by Kate St. John)
Here’s the real life comparison from Powdermill Nature Reserve‘s bird banding station. This sharpie has just been banded and is about to be released.
NOTE: If you’re viewing this on mobile: There is a bug on Facebook’s end since October 2024 that prevents displaying embedded Facebook posts on mobile devices. Until Meta fixes it click here to see the photo.
Here’s Powdermill’s complete Facebook text:
Sharp-shinned Hawks, often referred to as “sharpies,” are the smallest diurnal raptor (not including falcons) that we have in southwest Pennsylvania. They look a lot like the larger Cooper’s Hawk and can sometimes pose an identification challenge in the field. In fact, female Sharp-shinned Hawks are nearly the same size as male Cooper’s!
In these two species, and most raptors, the males are noticeably smaller than the females, which is called reverse sexual dimorphism. Researchers think that this is due to the sex roles during the breeding season: males need to be smaller and more agile to be efficient hunters to help feed nestlings.
Pictured here is a male Sharp-shinned Hawk next to a Sharpie marker, demonstrating that his body is about the length of the marker.
All birds are captured and banded under a federal permit issued by the Bird Banding Lab, part of the U.S. Geological Survey.
What happens when two owl species meet in the dark? If one of them is a great horned owl the other owl is frightened away. Great horned owls (Bubo virginianus) will eat anything including other owls.
Last year an Oswit Land Trust trail cam in Southern California picked up an unusual encounter. An American barn owl (Tyto furcata) was cooling its feet and drinking water when suddenly a bigger owl flew in. The great horned owl landed at the barn owl’s spot while the barn owl vaulted into the air and landed at a distance.
Great horned owls weigh more than 2.5 times that of barn owls. Naturally the barn owl was wary but he must have been very thirsty. Eventually he re-approached the watering hole.
video embedded from Oswit Land Trust on YouTube
Note that when the video began at 7:49p the temperature was 100°F but dropped to 98°F 23 minutes later at the end. It was hot and they were both so thirsty!
p.s. Did you know that barn owls were split into three species?
that Barn owls used to be one species, but DNA evidence revealed they are very different across their disjoint range. So they were split into three species last year.
On Friday morning 15 August Michele Beresh made her daily stop at Palmer Park to check on the swallow-tailed kite she first saw at Donora on 8 August. Her photo, above, was the next-to-last time(*) the bird was seen before it left that day on migration.UPDATE 18 August, 5am: The kite was seen on 17 August.
With a long journey ahead of them, the kites take their time in the fall.
The whole southbound trip may take a Swallow-tailed Kite anywhere from 8 weeks to 3 months. For the most part, they don’t rush. Instead they move at a slow but persistent pace, feeding as hunger and food availability dictate until reaching their wintering destinations. Unlike their northbound migration, when mates and a short nesting season await them, their southbound journey seems unhurried. — ARCI: The Kites Migrate South, 13 August 2018
We know about this timing because the Avian Research and Conservation Institute (ARCI) has been tracking swallow-tailed kite migration via satellite and GSM since 1996. Some kites dawdle so much in the fall that they don’t reach their favorite wintering grounds until December. Then they turn around just six weeks later and head north at a faster pace.
Swallow-tailed kite in Florida, March 2015 (photo by Chuck Tague)
12 August 2025
On Friday 8 August Michele Beresh reported a swallow-tailed kite (Elanoides forficatus) flying over Palmer Park, Donora, Pennsylvania at 2pm.
Seen flying at a distance. It looked shiny. Took photos and zoomed in on camera. No mistaking what it is. Tried to follow to get better photos but lost it while driving.
On Saturday morning John Flannigan found it again and Ron Burkert took photos.
PA Lifer. First Washington County PA eBird record. Saw John F returning to car and found out he had just refound the bird. It appeared beyond centerfield then drifted N. Able to see and get overhead views from composting area just beyond pipe gate from parking lot. Medium-sized raptor white and black with DEEP V-shaped tail. Actively foraging, mostly over forest, just beyond Stan “The Man” Musial Field. Numerous photos, including some eating prey while flying.
I went to see it Saturday at 2:15pm, watching from a park bench with a 180 degree view. I knew the bird would be hunting for dragonflies and I was hoping for a view like the one I saw in Florida in 2015, photo at top by Chuck Tague. Instead I saw:
Constantly flying. Distant! Fades in the haze until it wheels & shows its body shape. It took me an hour to notice it though it was probably there the whole time. Had a few good views through the scope.
Yesterday astute County Listers figured out they could stand in Gallatin Sunnyside Park in Allegheny County and see the bird flying over both counties. So now the swallow-tailed kite is recorded in Allegheny County, too. Yes it’s counted wherever the observer is standing.
Why is a swallow-tailed kite here?
Swallow-tailed kites breed in the southeastern U.S. but that’s the northern edge of their range. They leave North America in July and early August to join the year-round population in South America.
However, they are known to wander though they usually stay east of the Appalachians. Sometimes a kite will get as far north as Nova Scotia like the one that was seen there on 18 June 2025 — but they typically don’t visit our area . This bird is quite unusual.
Late July through early August is peak migration for swallow-tailed kites, especially through the Florida Keys where they sometimes see hundreds per day. Here are some recent reports from hawkcount.org:
2 Aug 2025: Bocas Valle de Agua, Panama, 383 swallow-tailed kites, 216 plumbeous kites 3 Aug 2025: Florida Keys Hawk Watch, 311 swallow-tailed kites 8 Aug 2025: Florida Keys Hawk Watch. 145 swallow-tailed kites 10 Aug 2025: Florida Keys Hawk Watch. Unfavorable winds but still saw 167 swallow-tailed kites
Soon this local bird will head south … but we don’t know when.
In June the Center for Conservation Biology (CCB) at William & Mary reported that aerial surveys of osprey nests indicate the population on the ocean side of Virginia’s Eastern Shore has collapsed in just 38 years — from 83 nests in 1987 to just 9 today, and the chicks in those nine nests are starving.
Ospreys are just the Canary in the Coal Mine. Something is wrong in the Chesapeake.
Though the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) decline began in the region 15 years ago it reached alarming proportions in the last five years. CCB launched intensive studies to find out why. By 2023 they knew that osprey chicks were starving in the main stem of Chesapeake Bay, that osprey chick nutrition depends on availability of Atlantic menhaden, and that menhaden are no longer available because of overfishing.
Due to its high energy density, menhaden is a critical prey item for osprey populations along the Atlantic Coast and within the Chesapeake Bay. … Researchers within The Center believe that the ongoing decline in young production is driven by overharvest of Atlantic menhaden. Forage fish such as menhaden, anchovy, sardine, capelin and herring play significant roles in marine ecosystems throughout the world. These small schooling fish are responsible for transferring energy from plankton to higher-level predators such as osprey. When forage fish are overharvested the marine food web is broken and higher-level predators suffer.
We don’t eat menhaden because they don’t taste good but we turn them into fish meal, fish oil and bait. According to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science: “More pounds of menhaden are landed each year than any other fish in the United States, with coast-wide landings ranging from 300,000 to 400,000 metric tons since the mid-1970s.”
Menhaden are easy to catch because they travel in dense schools like this.
Because of overfishing, especially in the Chesapeake, there are fewer and fewer young menhaden growing up to spawn and thus fewer menhaden overall. We can’t see how this is affecting bluefish, tuna and sharks but we can see what’s happening to osprey which may mirror what’s happening underwater. Osprey are showing the collapse of the marine food web in the Chesapeake.
(This successful pair is not at Chesapeake Bay. They upstream in the James River.)
The problem could be solved if Virginia changed its menhaden fishing limits (see below). If they don’t, menhaden will continue to disappear, perhaps catastrophically. The lack of fish will then limit everything and the Chesapeake could well become like Georges Bank in the 1990s.
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Mary Jo Berman asked, “What is the status of the menhaden population? Do we know why it is failing?” I have added this section with information from various points of view.
1. CCB has studied osprey hunting success. Very low catch rate of menhaden indicates fewer fish: “Within osprey pairs, males are responsible for hunting and providing fish to broods. Between 1985 and 2021, the rate of menhaden captures by male osprey declined from 2.4 fish per 10 hours to only 0.4 fish per 10 hours, a decline of more than 80 percent. Although osprey do feed on other fish species within the lower Chesapeake Bay none of these species offer comparable nutrient content.” [Hence the chicks starve.]
Osprey are one of many species that depend on the small, nutrient-packed fish [menhaden] for food. Menhaden also feed striped bass, dolphins, and humpback whales.
But the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC)’s current ecosystem model bases menhaden fishing limits only on what’s required to feed a healthy striped bass population. Whether these limits are sufficient to feed a growing population of osprey is unknown.
The colossal industrial menhaden fishery is based in Virginia[*]. However, scientific data on the impact on industrial menhaden fishing on the Chesapeake Bay is lacking, necessitating precautionary action to protect ospreys and other wildlife currently suffering from insufficient forage.
As early as the 19th century, overfishing caused the [menhaden] population to decline, and it’s been a cycle of boom and bust ever since. One by one, all the Atlantic states but one banned reduction factories and fishing for the reduction industry in their state waters, protecting the bays and estuaries where the immature fish live for their first year or two before heading into the ocean.
The one outlier is Virginia. The last reduction factory on the East Coast is located in Reedville, Virginia, providing jobs for about 250 local workers. But this is hardly a sleepy little local business. The operation is owned by Omega Protein Corporation, which in turn is owned by a Canadian multinational, Cooke Inc. Omega’s fishing vessels use 1,500-foot-long purse seine nets to harvest hundreds of millions of pounds of menhaden every year. The fish are processed at the Reedville factory and then shipped out to Omega’s other business operations around the world.
In 2012, in the face of plummeting numbers of menhaden blamed on Omega’s operations, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) took on the regulation of menhaden fishing. Today the ASMFC allocates catch levels among the states, but in a way that locks in Omega’s outsized share of the fishery. Virginia’s — that is, Omega’s — quota is 75% of the total. The other 14 states in the compact share the last 25%, enough to supply bait for local crabbers, fishermen and lobstermen.
Virginia is an exception in other ways, too. Not only is Omega permitted to operate in state waters along the Virginia coast, which no other Atlantic state allows, Virginia also lets Omega’s vessels fish in the Chesapeake Bay. In fact, Omega is currently allowed to take 112 million pounds (51,000 metric tons) of menhaden out of Virginia’s side of the Chesapeake Bay every year, about a third of Virginia’s total quota. …
The bay’s health is famously precarious. Many of its fish and birds that depend on menhaden for food are in decline, including striped bass (rockfish) and osprey. The declines threaten economic mainstays like the recreational striped bass fishery, which generates an estimated $500 million annually in economic activity.
On my last visit to Finland eight years ago I was thrilled to see common cranes (Grus grus). Back then their global population was estimated to be half a million strong — and increasing — with “by far the largest breeding populations in Russia, Finland and Sweden.” Considering their preference for Finland, it shouldn’t be hard to find some on this visit.
If you want to see common cranes outside the breeding season, visit them in the brown areas on this map. {The other colors are breeding (purple), wintering (brown) and year-round(green).} Interestingly, eBird’s map shows them year-round in Germany and Poland but, due to lack of eBirders in Africa, the Nile valley wintering grounds are not listed.
Eurasian eagle owls (Bubo bubo) span the continent from Norway and Spain to the Russian Far East, the Koreas, and China. Because they have been persecuted by people they are very sensitive to human disturbance in Sweden and will abandon eggs and even nestlings.
In some places they nest in parks, such as this owl family in southern Germany.
(video from Wikimedia Commons)
But the most amazing were the city owls who moved into Helsinki about 20 years ago when the rabbit population grew large. One of them became famous by “crashing” a soccer playoff at Helsinki Olympic Stadium(*).
Another pair nested above a city street in 2011. One of their youngsters miscalculated a short airborne hop and his mistake became an adventure. He had his first city tour complete with a fire department rescue from the top of the “Southern Fried Chicken” sign.
Eurasian eagle owls are not reported anymore in Helsinki’s city center. I suspect that they left when the rabbit population returned to normal.
p.s. More about the celebrity owl at the stadium: On 6 June 2007 the Euro 2008 Finland-vs-Belgium qualifying match was being held at the stadium when an eagle owl landed on the field and flew to the goal posts. The game was suspended during the owl’s visit while the crowd cheered “Huuhkaja!” (Finnish common name for the owl). Finland won the game 2-0, the owl was nicknamed Bubi and “Helsinki Citizen of the Year,” and Finland’s soccer team was nicknamed the “Eurasian Eagle Owls.” See a video of Bubi’s game-time visit here.
Red-tailed hawk at eye level, almost hidden, 14 Nov 2025
