Spanish cellist Diana Gomez plays music outdoors in many venues. Here’s what happened when she took her cello into a forest and played Bach’s Suite No.1.
Doe drinks from a pond in Homewood Cemetery, Pittsburgh, 10 October 2022 (photo by John English)
25 October 2022
If you’ve been watching white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the City of Pittsburgh you’ve noticed that they’ve changed their behavior since early September. Back then deer were easy find in groups during the day but now in October they seem to have gone missing. Soon — very soon — they’ll be running into traffic. All of this is part of their breeding season, called the rut, which is driven by photoperiod.
In late summer, white-tailed deer hang out in bachelor groups of adult males and matriarchal groups of does with fawns. As the rut goes through phases, described below, the dynamics change. In the city we live with so many deer that it’s good to know the phases.
Pre-Rut Phase: In late September and early October testosterone levels rise in the bucks, they rub on trees and shed velvet from their antlers. The bachelor groups break up as each male goes it alone and adjusts his home range. During this phase the bucks eat a lot, especially acorns. Once the rut begins they’ll be too busy to eat while chasing, breeding and tending does.
Seeking and Chasing Phase: As the females begin coming into estrous the males search for and chase does in heat. The bucks move around lot, averaging 3-6 miles per day. Meanwhile doe+fawn groups break up as adult females become distracted. Watch out! They may run into traffic.
The late summer groups have already broken up in Schenley and Frick Parks. The only deer I’ve seen recently are lone females or almost grownup fawns.
At the peak of the rut bucks make long excursions out of their home range in search of females, sometimes 10-20 miles. The peak also includes a “tending” phase during which bucks and does pair up and hide in thick cover to breed repeatedly.
Post-Rut Phase: Activity drops off precipitously in early December after most of the does have bred. Adults stop wandering and settle into their home ranges. The males still have antlers and some will search for recently-matured fawns that come into estrous (red color in graph above), but the frantic edge is gone.
When will we see deer in lazy groups again in the city parks? Wait and see.
11+ deer in Schenley Park, Cathedral of Learning in distance, March 2019 (photo by Kate St John)
Colorful leaves, Schenley Park, 9 Oct 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
10 October 2022
The season has changed and the woods in Schenley Park look different than they did a month ago. The trees are putting on fall color and deer are providing more evidence of their overpopulation in the park.
Doe browsing in Schenley Park, 21 Aug 2022. NOTE: A buck-rubbed sapling is in the foreground (photo by Kate St. John)
With the growing season over there is less greenery for deer to eat and there are fewer places to browse because they have already denuded many areas.
Nothing growing on the ground in the presence of too many deer, Schenley Park, 9 October 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
What is left has been eaten down to nubs, just visible above the unpalatable invasive plants. Below, goutweed nearly hides the tops of what used to be jewelweed while pokeweed was browsed to tiny leaves and bare stems.
Favored plants are browsed to the tops of unappetizing plants (goutweed), Schenley Park 9 Oct 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Pokeweed overbrowsed by deer, Schenley Park, 9 October 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
As the greenery disappears deer eat tree saplings and small branches. In cases of deer overpopulation, such as Schenley Park, the young trees are foraged down to bonsai.
Ash tree sapling overbrowsed by deer, like bonsai, Schenley Park, 9 Oct 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Schenley no longer has enough food for deer so at night they walk into neighborhoods and browse in backyards. This is happening across the city and has prompted some residents to consider a Deer Management Plan for Pittsburgh. KDKA’s Andy Sheen reports: Some Pittsburgh residents say it’s time to get deer population under control. Click on the link or the screenshot below.
Arrowwood viburnum, Schenley Park, September 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
29 September 2022
In western Pennsylvania, where we have a high deer population, gardeners have learned from experience that white-tailed deer will eat some plants and not others. They heavily browse their favorites to the point of killing them but leave others untouched, even plants in the same genus.
Viburnum is a case in point. Gardening advice at Rutgers University’s Landscape Plants Rated by Deer Resistance indicates that arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum) is deer resistant. Pictured at top, these shrubs are healthy in Schenley Park where the deer population is more than 100 per square mile.
Deer also don’t like the Japanese snowball (Viburnum plicatum) which thrives as an invasive in Frick Park, shown below.
Viburnum plicatum fruit, Schenley, July 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
But they love our native hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) and consume it to local extinction.
Hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) is a favorite food of deer (photo taken in Maine by Kate St. John)
Honeybee approaches wingstem, Frick Park, 8 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
17 September 2022
In Schenley and Frick Parks you can look straight through the forest if you duck your head below four feet high. In Schenley Park the ground is often bare and most plants in that four-foot zone are gone. But one flower, wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia), is doing just fine in the city parks.
Wingstem, Frick Park, 8 Sep 2022
The absence of cover from the ground to 4 – 5 feet is called a browseline (below) and is evidence of an overpopulation of white-tailed deer.
Bare ground and absence of cover below the trees in Schenley Park, September 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
According to this KDKA report, the deer population in Schenley Park is estimated at 80-120 per acre, which roughly equates to 57-86 deer per square mile. A 2010 deer study for City Parks found that the parks can support 7-8 deer per square mile, but with 8 to 11 times that number living in Schenley any plant still growing there is definitely something deer don’t eat.
Doe browsing in Schenley Park, September 2022 (photo by Kate Sr. John)
So why don’t deer eat wingstem?
A thicket of wingstem on the “elbow” trail, Frick Park, 8 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
7-point buck in Schenley Park, 28 Aug 2022 (photo by Connie Gallagher)
29 August 2022
A year ago in Schenley Park we had such a slow birding day that I wrote, “We worked for every bird.” A year later, nine of us were there yesterday and the birding was even slower! (14 species instead of 19.) However we found lots of insects and two white-tailed bucks in velvet. Here’s the story in pictures, thanks to Connie Gallagher.
Connie saw the very Best Bird, a blue-gray gnatcatcher.
Blue-gray gnatcatcher, Schenley Park, 28 August 2022 (photo by Connie Gallagher)
We pondered the identity of these wasps and then remembered, all at once, that they are bald-faced hornets (Dolichovespula maculata), a type of yellowjacket wasp.
Bald-faced hornets at their paper nest in a pignut hickory, Schenley Park, 28 Aug 2022 (photo by Connie Gallagher)
There was still dew on the wild senna as this bumblebee gathered nectar.
Bumblebee on wild senna, Schenley Park, 28 Aug 2022 (photo by Connie Gallagher)
The browseline is so severe in Schenley Park that there’s no cover for the deer who sleep there during the day. Looking down from the Falloon Trail we saw two bucks, a 7-point buck (at top) and a 10-point below.
10-point buck in Schenley Park, 28 Aug 2022 (photo by Connie Gallagher)
Fortunately some of us heard these birds flying overhead. I can tell their identity by shape and the yellow tips of their tails. Cedar waxwings.
Cedar waxwings fly over, Schenley Park, 28 Aug 2022 (photo by Connie Gallagher)
Here’s the group that worked for every bird on Sunday. Thank you all for coming!
Schenley Park outing, 28 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
A synanthrope (syn-anthrope) [from Greek: syn-anthrope: syn=”together with” + anthropos=”man”] is a wild animal or plant that lives near, and benefits from, an association with humans and the somewhat artificial habitats that people create around themselves.
Horseweed (Erigeron canadensis) and pilewort (Erechtites hieraciifolius) are native North American plants that like disturbed soil. We notice them in August when they start to look ugly.
p.s. (*) Merriam-Webster explains that the word was introduced by botanist Theodor von Heldreich at a botanical conference in Paris, 16-24 August 1878, making its first-ever use almost exactly 144 years ago.
Doe in Schenley Park, July 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
22 August 2022
Back in 2010 the City of Pittsburgh commissioned a deer count in the parks that found the population was too high and not sustainable for the habitat. Nothing has been done since then to reduce the deer population other than accidentally killing them with our cars.
Twelve years have passed. According to deer experts “Urban deer can live for 10 years; the deer population, if unchecked, doubles about every two years.” Schenley Park now has as much as 60 times the number of deer we had in 2010. This is truly unsustainable, even for the deer themselves.
8-point buck in Schenley Park, 21 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Schenley’s deer have completely consumed all the good food plants and are starting to nibble the poisonous ones. The browse line is painfully obvious. In the process deer have eradicated their favorite plants from Schenley Park.
Orange jewelweed and yellow jewelweed provide nectar for hummingbirds and bumblebees and are a favored food of deer.
Orange jewelweed in Schenley Park in 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)Yellow jewelweed in Schenley Park in 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
Both jewelweeds were prolific in Schenley Park as recently as four years ago.
Orange jewelweed was prolific in 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
But this year all the accessible plants have been eaten down to bare stems. The only ones that flower are those in spots unreachable by deer — on extremely steep slopes or hidden among thick cattails in Panther Hollow Lake.
Deer ate the jewelweed, no flowers, no leaves (photo by Kate St. John)
Jewelweeds are annuals that must re-seed every year but no seeds are produced in this deer-browsed landscape. Impatiens will disappear from Schenley Park when the seed bank is exhausted.
False Solomon’s seal used to grow throughout Schenley Park and it carpeted the ground in an area near the Bridle Trail. All of it has been eaten to the ground since 2014. Here’s what it looked like eight years ago.
False Solomon’s seal blooming in May 2012 (photo by Kate St. John)False Solomon’s seal in August 2014 (photo by Kate St. John)
White wood asters used to bloom in Schenley’s woods. Not anymore. Here’s what they looked like in 2013.
White wood asters in Schenley Park, August 2013 (photo by Kate St. John)
Eradicated plants are indirect evidence of too many deer in Schenley Park. Direct evidence is their visibility every day.
A sustainably-sized deer herd would hide in the underbrush while sleeping during the day, but the browse line in Schenley is so severe there is no cover for them. The large herd has coped by becoming accustomed to people and leashed dogs.
I stood near this group of three deer on Sunday 21 August using my snapshot camera zoomed to 90mm (approximately 2x). This 8-point buck did not care that I was there.
8-point buck in velvet, Schenley Park, 21 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Young doe and buck browsing in Schenley Park, 21 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Doe watches a husky dog on a leash approach in the distance, Schenley Park, 21 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Yews are popular landscaping shrubs but they don’t last long in the face of deer overpopulation.
All yew species are toxic to some degree, but our native Taxus canadensis is less toxic than others and was used medicinally. Deer don’t read the warning labels. They love yew.
Every night they creep up behind Carnegie Museum and browse the yews along the driveway to the parking garage. They nip off the small branches and eat all the leaves. The shrubs struggle to grow new leaves for photosynthesis before the deer return.
Yew overbrowsed by deer behind Carnegie Museum, 16 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Deer have killed the yews closest to the sidewalk (dead twigs), overbrowsed the middle shrubs (green knobs), and cannot yet reach the tallest branches. But they are eating their way there.
Yews browsed by deer behind Carnegie Museum, 16 Aug 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Don’t assume their love stops with yew. There are more delectables in Schenley Park that they adore. Soon we’ll explore more.
Wingstem from bud to seed, Schenley Park, 3 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
6 August 2022
By early August many flowers have already produced seeds. Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) above displays every step in the process: buds, new flowers, fading flowers and seed packets.
The three-flanged seed pods of American wild yamroot (Dioscorea villosa) are as distinctive as its pleated leaves.
American wild yamroot leaves and seeds, Jennings 29 July 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) now has both seed pods and flowers (seeds in shadow at left). This alien plant is easy to find in Schenley Park because it is toxic to deer.
Greater celandine with seeds in the background, Schenley Park, 3 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
