1 January 2021

2020 was an awful year and it will take a while before 2021 is any better, but no matter what’s happening there’s a way to take your mind off the mess and calm down: Get outdoors.

Lots of people took this advice and discovered birding in 2020. A new year, a new month, a new day is a great time to see more birds.

This week I rediscovered good resolutions for the New Year in an interview I gave on The Allegheny Front in the summer of 2009(*).

Go outdoors, look around, look up.  You’ll get a view of things that are bigger than yourself. … I find it very calming to see that life goes on despite whatever is going on in my head. Nature is still rolling.

— Allegheny Front radio interview with Kate St. John, 2009

So despite the tedium of putting on winter clothes, trudging in gray weather, and dealing with foggy glasses, make the effort. Get outdoors. Look up. There’s always something out there.

Hot tip: If you’re in the Pittsburgh area go see the evening grosbeaks at North Park (photos at this link). They’ve been at this location for several days including yesterday, 31 Dec 2020. Park at the north end of the Spillway Lot.

Notes on the interview(*) A lot has changed in 12 years. In the interview I said that I work at WQED (No. I retired in 2014), that my blog is on WQED’s website (No. It’s been at birdsoutsidemywindow.org since 2015), that I hike alone (No. Now that I’m retired and due to COVID restrictions, hiking/birding is my one opportunity to see friends). And I’m older now with a lot more wrinkles under that mask. 😉

(photo by Donna Foyle, audio from The Allegheny Front, 2009)

19 December 2020

As we approach the shortest day(*) of the northern year we can take heart that our days are as long as they are. 70 million years ago, in the age of the dinosaurs, the Earth spun faster than it does today. Rather than having 86,400 seconds per day to get things done, dinosaur days were half an hour shorter.

This discovery came to light when paleontologists used lasers to study the growth rings of a rudist bivalve fossil found in the mountains of Oman. During the Cretaceous period rudist bivalves lived in tropical seas and grew throughout their lifetimes, laying down new shell material every day.

The lasers were precise enough to identify four to five data points within each day cycle and see that …

The composition of the shell changed more over the course of a day than over seasons, or with the cycles of ocean tides. The fine-scale resolution of the daily layers shows the shell grew much faster during the day than at night.

— AGU.org: Ancient shell shows days were half hour shorter 70 million years ago

Thus “the growth rings allowed the researchers to determine the number of days in a year and more accurately calculate the length of a day 70 million years ago.” They also discovered information on the Moon’s formation and proximity. — agu.org

The Earth, like all of us, is slowing down with age. Every day is infinitesimally longer than the last. (It sure has felt that way during the COVID-19 pandemic!) On the bright side, even when we feel rushed we can be glad we have that daily half hour the dinosaurs missed.

Read more at: Ancient shell shows days were half hour shorter 70 million years ago.

(illustration of dinosaurs from Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original)

(*) The winter solstice is at 5:02am ET on 21 December 2020.

20 November 2020

When COVID-19 surged in Allegheny County in late June I wrote about the coronavirus as one very, very difficult forest fire. That surge ended and summer was good. We were able to eat together outdoors. We became complacent. Yet the fire still smouldered waiting to erupt. And now it has.

On Tuesday 17 November 2020 the White House Coronavirus Task Force said:

“There is now aggressive, unrelenting, expanding, broad community spread across the country reaching most counties, with no evidence of improvement, but rather deterioration. Current mitigation efforts are inadequate and must be increased to flatten the curve to sustain the health system for COVID and non-COVID emergencies.”

— White House Coronavirus Task Force report, 17 Nov 2020

Allegheny County saw a record-setting surge in the last 5 days and is now under a stay-at-home advisory. If we can’t turn the tide in Pennsylvania we’re in danger of running out of ICU beds all at the same time.

How severe is the pandemic where you live? This map from globalpandemics.org shows risk levels by U.S. congressional district per 100,000 people as of 20 Nov 2020 at 7am. Red is bad!

The coronavirus fire is so out of control that there are some U.S. counties where in a group of 15 people you have a 99% chance of eating Thanksgiving dinner with someone infected with COVID-19. Think about that. You can’t eat with a mask on. 15 people, 99% chance of COVID in the room. What if someone in your family comes from one of those counties?

Every current news article about the virus says that private gatherings are now a major force driving new infections.

And so I’m going to join with many other voices and say, Don’t gather at Thanksgiving.

Two vaccines are almost ready. We could lose loved ones if we gather at Thanksgiving this year. Next Thanksgiving will be fine. Is it worth having Mom die this year when *one time* of carefulness would have avoided it?

Connie Schultz says it really well in This Thanksgiving, Choose Love.

This is the year to focus on the gratitude part of Thanksgiving. Let’s start with the people we love. Not tolerate. Love.

Make that list, and then ask yourself, “Which of these people am I willing to lose?”

Do the right thing. I’m begging you.

— This Thanksgiving, Choose Love by Connie Schultz

(photo from Wikimedia Commons, map from globalpandemics.org; click on the images to see the originals)

3 November 2020

Since the 1980s scientists have known that birds are highly specialized dinosaurs that survived the K-T extinction 66 million years ago. Dinosaurs were reptiles. Therefore so are birds. Who among the reptiles is the bird’s closest relative?

The cladogram below shows how mammals and reptiles had a common “stem reptile” ancestor. However, during the Carboniferous period mammals diverged from the rest of reptiles and became very different (left branch).

During the Permian, Turtles diverged from the rest of the reptiles. Later the Archosaurs did, too (far right branch). Some of the Archosaurs resembled crocodiles.

Crocodiles didn’t change much in the past 80 million years.

But dinosaurs changed a lot and the Theropod dinosaurs became birds!

These unlikely relatives reunite at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park where wild birds nest in the trees above the crocodiles.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons, diagram derived from Creative Commons licensed cladogram; click on the captions to see the originals)