Category Archives: Musings & News

Wild Bird Flu Now in Pittsburgh

March 1, 2025Crows & Ravens, Musings & NewsKate St. John

Crows hang out together (photo from WIkimedia Commons)

1 March 2025

Yesterday’s news was sobering for Pittsburgh’s winter crow flock when the Post-Gazette reported that 50 crows found dead in January tested positive for H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza. It was the first incidence of avian flu in Allegheny County in more than two years.

The Pittsburgh crows were collected on Jan. 24 and tested positive in preliminary tests for the deadly virus on Feb. 10, said Travis Lau, communications director for the Game Commission.
— Post-Gazette: First Pittsburgh cases of avian flu in years detected in American crows

It’s not hard to imagine how it happened. In January Pittsburgh’s winter flock of 15,000 crows roosts communally and fans out during the day as much as 50 miles to find food. The furthest travelers would have caught bird flu in an infected surrounding county and brought it to the roost. H5N1 is so contagious that it quickly spread to flock mates.

Crows moving in to roost near the Carnegie Science Center, 18 January 2025 (photo by Carol Steytler)

Apparently the crows knew what to do when death visited the roost. Crow watchers noticed that they changed the roost location a lot in January, perhaps avoiding sick birds and death locations. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard of more crows deaths. Or maybe it simply takes weeks for the reports to reach us.

Crows in semi darkness (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Meanwhile keep in mind that if you find a sick or dead bird you should not touch it!

Because of the highly contagious nature of the virus among birds, and the fact that, while rare, it can be transmitted to humans, the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD), the Game Commission and other agencies urge the public not to touch sick or dead birds and report them to the Game Commission.

Anyone who sees a sick or dead wild bird should report it to the PA Game Commission at 833-742-9453.

Residents who suspect their poultry is infected with avian influenza should call the Pennsylvania Bureau of Animal Health and Diagnostic Services at 717-772-2852, option 1.

Residents who feel ill after contact with sick or dead birds should consult their primary care physician or the Pennsylvania Department of Health at 877-724-3258.
— Post-Gazette: First Pittsburgh cases of avian flu in years detected in American crows

See the 2021-2025 distribution of highly pathogenic (HPAI, H5N1) avian influenza in wild birds in the U.S. by county as of mid-February 2025 here at USDA.

She’s a Mother Again at Age 74+

February 17, 2025Musings & News, Nesting & Courtship, Water and ShoreKate St. John

Laysan albatross, Wisdom, with her chick (5 Feb 2021 photo by USFWS Pacific)

17 February 2025

In case you missed it, the world’s oldest known banded wild bird has become a mother again at age 74. (She might be even older than 74.)

Wisdom is a female Laysan albatross who was banded (red Z333) as a breeding adult at Midway Atoll in 1956. Since her species cannot breed until age six and usually delays breeding until age seven or eight, Wisdom is at least 74 years old now, maybe even 77.

Wisdom breeds at the world’s largest albatross colony on Midway Atoll in the Hawaiian Islands chain. Like all of her species she spends most of her life at sea but returns to her breeding grounds each year to rejoin her mate, lay one egg, and raise the chick.

This year she returned as usual and laid her egg in late November. Then she and her mate took turns incubating for about 65 days and their egg hatched in early February. Here’s the chick with its parents. (Wisdom has a red leg band.)

74-year-old Laysan albatross, Wisdom, with her latest chick (video published 14 Feb 2025 embedded from USATODAY)

If Wisdom was a human she’d be part of the Baby Boomer generation. I cannot even imagine being a mother at her age!

Wild Bird Flu Update in PA

February 12, 2025Doves & Chickens, Musings & News, Water and ShoreKate St. John

Snow Geese at Middle Creek, 4 March 2009 (photo by Kim Steininger)

11 February 2025

It’s been six weeks since hundreds of snow geese stricken with highly pathogenic (HPAI, H5N1) avian influenza were found dead and dying in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh and Northampton Counties on New Year’s Day.

By 24 January bird flu had killed 5,000 snow geese in Northampton County as well as raptors and scavengers including bald eagles and vultures and a snowy owl at Presque Isle.

Meanwhile the virus jumped from wild birds to an enormous commercial poultry farm: The first commercial poultry outbreak in PA since Feb 2024 was reported in Lehigh County on 27 January in a 50,000 commercial layer flock (egg farm). All commercial poultry facilities within a 10km (6.2 mile) radius have been placed under quarantine. (This is an example of why eggs are scarce and expensive.)

And so it comes as no surprise that the #1 location for snow goose migration in Pennsylvania — Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area near Kleinfeltersville — has been closed for the spring migration season.

The PA Game Commission announced ACCESS RESTRICTED AT MIDDLE CREEK on 3 February 2025.

HARRISBURG — Due to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) that is currently affecting many parts of the state, the Pennsylvania Game Commission is restricting public access at the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, effective Tuesday.

With the continued warming trends and the anticipated arrival of snow geese to Middle Creek, this decision was made out of an abundance of caution for human and domestic animal health.

Beginning Tuesday 4 February 2025, the following areas will be CLOSED to all public access:

Willow Point Parking Lot and Trail

Archery Range

Boat Launch

White Oak Picnic Area

All shoreline access of the lake, INCLUDING fishing

The Wildlife Drive remains seasonally closed, and an extended closure is possible.

Hiking trails (with the exception of Willow Point Trail and Deer Path Trail) and the Visitor Center will remain open during regular business hours, and all events will take place as scheduled.

All visitors are reminded:

If you have pet birds, backyard domestic poultry, or connections with commercial poultry facilities, you are STRONGLY discouraged to visit during this time to minimize transmission risk.

You are HIGHLY ADVISED to remain in your vehicles while observing wildlife from roadways.

Please remember the public plays a critical role in wildlife health surveillance. Report sick or dead wild birds to the Game Commission by calling 1-833-PGC-WILD (1-833-742-9453).
— PGC Press Release, 3 Feb 2025

Flocks at Middle Creek can contain 100,000 snow geese and 10,000 tundra swans at the peak of migration. This is what it looked like 3 years ago in 2022. It’s easy to see how these birds could spread contagious diseases.

video embedded from PennLive on YouTube

While bird flu (HPAI) spreads during spring migration remember to:

Always observe wildlife from a safe distance.
Avoid contacting surfaces that may be contaminated with feces from wild or domestic birds.
Do not handle wildlife unless you are hunting, trapping, or otherwise authorized to do so.

UPDATE, 28 Feb 2025 via Post-Gazette: The snow goose death toll in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania is now at 5,000 –> and these are just the birds that people could see and count.

Every Pigeon Counts

February 10, 2025Doves & Chickens, Musings & NewsKate St. John

Rock pigeon (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

10 February 2025

When you count birds next weekend for the Great Backyard Bird Count eBird has a lot of advice on how to do it. There are pages and pages on how to be accurate but for me the easiest counting error to fix is this: Don’t forget to count non-native species.

At the end of every eBird checklist the app asks, “Are you submitting a complete checklist of the birds you were able to identify?”

“YES” means “I wrote down every species.”
It also means that during data analysis researchers can infer that “No other species were present.”

If you don’t include pigeons, house sparrows or starlings but you answer YES you have biased your results.

Observer selection bias occurs when the evidence presented has been pre-filtered by observers. … The data collected is not only filtered by the design of experiment, but also by the necessary precondition that there must be someone doing a study.
— WIkipedia: Selection Bias

Some observer bias is hard to eradicate but this one is easy. YES there are pigeons on this light pole. Tell eBird how many.

Pigeons on a traffic light (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Don’t worry that they are non-native. eBird colors the map orange outside their native range. Your checklists update the rock pigeon (Columba livia) map worldwide.

Explore Species Maps: Rock Pigeon (screenshot from eBird, August 2022)

So remember to count all the birds you see and hear during the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Silhouetted pigeons (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Every pigeon counts!

Did You Know? Bread Is Bad For Me!

February 6, 2025Musings & News, Water and ShoreKate St. John

close shot of ducks by David Tomic via Flickr Creative Commons license

6 February 2025

It sure is fun to feed the birds but not all food is good for them. Did you know that bread is junk food for birds? Just like us, ducks love junk food but it is bad as a steady diet.

Bread, crackers and our own junk food snacks have no nutritional value for ducks and geese. These foods are especially bad for ducklings because their little bodies are still growing and have special nutritional needs.

If a duckling depends on bread instead of a varied normal diet its wing bones will grow in a deformed manner called angel wing, a condition similar to rickets in humans. Both are permanent deformities caused by malnutrition.

Because this bird has angel wing it will never fly.

Duck with angel wing deformity from malnutrition (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Since ducks don’t control their own junk food intake, and since we don’t know how much bread they ate before we got there, don’t feed bread to birds. Maine Audubon suggests what to feed them instead.

Some great options are lettuce or cabbage … Other things you can give them are: corn (not popcorn), rice, peas, broccoli, tomatoes, and most fruits (not citrus).
— Maine Audubon: Do’s and Don’ts of Duck Feeding

“Hey, Duck, no more! Didn’t you hear that bread is bad for you?”

Give this duck some lettuce.

Hey, no more! (photo by Andy Ihnatko via Flickr Creative Commons license)

Read more about bread and ducks in this vintage article from 2018.

Bread Is Bad For Birds

Starlings Are Declining in North America

February 5, 2025Musings & News, SongbirdsKate St. John

Two common starlings in non-breeding plumage (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

5 February 2025

During January’s cold snap, flocks of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) suddenly swarmed backyard bird feeders and everyone wished they would just “Go away!”

Common starling flock in winter in Newark, Ohio (photo by Mary Ellen St. John via Wikimedia Commons)

As it happens starlings are going away, though maybe not quickly in your backyard.

Despite its success and large numbers, the European Starling is now in steep decline, like so many other species in North America. The current population is half the size it was 50 years ago – down from an estimated 166.2 million breeding birds in 1970 to 85.1 million. The species is also declining in Europe.(*)
— Cornell Chronicle: Starling success traced to rapid adaptation, Feb 2021, emphasis added

The decline is easy to see in red on eBird’s European starling Trends map, 2012-2022.

European starling: Breeding season population trends in North America, 2012-2022 (from eBird Status and Trends)

In just a decade starlings declined 14.9% in North America, mostly in the Midwest and especially Illinois where they are down 24.5%.

Despite this, many of us worry that starlings are having a negative impact on cavity-nesting native birds — but they are not.

Starlings often take over the nests of native birds, expelling the occupants. With so many starlings around, there is concern about their effect on native bird populations. Nevertheless, a study in 2003 found few actual effects on populations of 27 native species. Only sapsuckers showed declines due to starlings; other species appeared to be holding their own against the invaders.
— All About Birds: European starling account

“Only sapsuckers showed declines?” Fortunately this is not quite the case in Pennsylvania. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers have declined in certain regions of PA but in others they have increased. In areas of overlap with starlings, such as the western I-80 corridor, sapsuckers have increased. [I-80 is under the word “Pennsylvania” on the maps below.]

Meanwhile, starlings have declined more than sapsuckers overall and have not appreciably increased in the sapsuckers’ range. Compare the two Trends maps below.

Breeding population trends in PA 2012-2022: Yellow-bellied sapsucker (top) and European starling (bottom)

If you don’t like starlings, don’t worry. The problem is taking care of itself.

(*) In the UK the starling population dropped 80% in just 25 years from 1987 to 2012. This is very worrisome because they are a native bird in Europe.

Twirling Kudzu Like Spaghetti

January 31, 2025Musings & News, Plants & FungiKate St. John

Kudzu draping trees in Atlanta (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

31 January 2025

If you’ve ever been to Atlanta you’ve seen areas like the one pictured above where invasive kudzu is draped over everything. You can see why it’s called “The vine that ate the South.”

Kudzu was introduced to the Southeast U.S. back in 1883 and given a healthy head start on its way to invasion.

The vine was widely marketed in the Southeast as an ornamental plant, … as a high-protein content cattle fodder and as a cover plant to prevent soil erosion.

By 1946, it was estimated that 3,000,000 acres of kudzu had been planted [in the U.S].
— Wikipedia: Kudzu in the United States, emphasis added

Planted!

Now that the genii is out of the bottle, how do we get rid of it? Good question.

The video below shows an interesting technique that is not enough to eradicate kudzu but is very satisfying to watch.

The “business” end of the equipment is a claw or grabber attached to a Tiltrotator on an excavator. It twirls the kudzu like spaghetti.

video embedded from TheRegrowthProject on YouTube

Snowy Owl? Or Plastic Bag?

January 23, 2025Birds of Prey, Musings & NewsKate St. John

Is that a snowy owl? Franklin County, PA 12 Jan 2014 (photo by Nancy Magnusson via Flickr Creative Commons license)

23 January 2025

Those who ventured out in this week’s bitter cold hoped to see birds from the far north who had just arrived on the wind. The typical way to find them is to drive past frozen fields watching for movement and scanning for anything that looks like a bird.

What’s that white lump in the field? Is it a snowy owl? Or a plastic bag?

Eleven years ago the winter of 2013-2014 was extremely cold and there was a huge irruption of snowy owls in the Northeast and Great Lakes. People photographed all of them, even the distant ones, to document them in eBird.

At top: Is that a plastic bag on that patch of snow? Below: Are there plastic bags or snowy owls in this photo? And how many?

Where’s the snowy owl? There are 3 in Jackson County, MI on 26 Dec 2013 (photo by Don Henise via Flickr Creative Commons license)

Is there a snowy owl in this picture?

Where’s the snowy owl in this picture? West Dennis Beach, Cape Cod, 17 Jan 2014 (photo by On The Wander via Flickr Creative Commons license)

Answer: All three photos have a snowy owls in them. The middle photo has 3 along the ridge top.

This winter we have not seen a big influx of snowy owls into Pennsylvania though there have been a couple of sightings.

screenshot of snowy owl sightings in the northeastern US in Jan 2025 (eBird species map as of 23 Jan 2025)

Recently there’s a snowy owl near Grantsville, Maryland which is often photographed from afar. A white lump?

If you’ve ever looked for a snowy owl and found a plastic bag you’ll enjoy the story and photos at The Search for Snowy Owls by Friends of the Fox River in Elgin, Illinois.

Cats, Cows and Cardinals: More Info on Bird Flu

January 13, 2025Mammals, Musings & NewsKate St. John

13 January 2025

After hundreds of snow geese died in eastern Pennsylvania on New Years Day of suspected avian influenza, there has been more attention on H5N1 in PA. The current focus is on the danger to domestic poultry and how we can avoid catching it ourselves from live or dead birds. Here are three avian flu topics you may not have heard about.

Cats

Did you know that cats and dogs can catch H5N1 by contact with dead or sick birds or their droppings? If your cat or dog mouths or eats a bird with avian influenza, he can catch the virus.

Cats like to drink milk and on dairy farms they drink it before it’s pasteurized. That’s how we found out it’s possible to catch bird flu from raw milk. According to Your Local Epidemiologist, “Fifty percent of cats that drink raw milk died.”

Update on 17 January 2025: Veterinarians recently discovered that cats also can catch H5N1 from raw pet food and it is just as deadly as drinking infected raw milk — 50% die. Two brands have been recalled. See: Cat deaths linked to bird flu-contaminated raw pet food, sparking voluntary recall.

Cows

Farm cats gave us the clue that infected dairy cows express the virus in their milk. The fact that cows caught bird flu was a surprise itself. Pigs are the usual domestic mammal pathway but last year H5N1 jumped from poultry to cows and then mutated to spread cow-to-cow.

Cardinals … and backyard birds

The wild birds that catch H5N1 avian influenza are waterfowl (ducks, geese), shorebirds, wild poultry (turkeys, grouse) and the birds that eat them: raptors (hawks, eagles, falcons) and scavengers (crows, gulls, vultures). Backyard birds are not susceptible. Your Local Epidemiologist explains:

What about bird feeders? Birds that gather at feeders (like cardinals, sparrows, and bluebirds) do not typically carry H5N1. The USDA does not recommend removing backyard bird feeders for H5N1 prevention unless you also care for poultry. The less contact between wild birds and poultry (by removing sources of food, water, and shelter), the better.
— YLe: H5N1 Update – January 7

The PA Game Commission agrees that backyard birds are not susceptible and adds that we should always keep our feeders clean to stop the spread of disease.

Clean your feeders every couple of weeks. Wild Birds Unlimited tells you how at Bird Feeder Cleaning & Care, including a video.

And … “If you notice multiple sick or dead birds over a short period of time, you should strongly consider leaving feeders down and baths empty to not make any potential outbreak worse.”

For more practical information on H5N1 and other infectious diseases follow Your Local Epidemiologist on Substack.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons at these links: cat, cows, cardinal)

Descendants of The Terror Birds

January 12, 2025Birds of Prey, Musings & News, PeregrinesKate St. John

Illustration of a Terror Bird, Titanis walleri (image from Wikimedia Commons)

12 January 2025

Today we live among the descendants of the Terror Birds. Who were they? And who are they now?

Terror Birds (Phorusrhacids) were a genus of large, flightless, carnivorous birds that thrived in South America from 43 million to 100,000 years ago. Wikipedia describes them as “among the largest apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic era.”

As you can see from this diagram the largest of them could easily have eaten a human and, because Homo sapiens evolved around 300,000 years ago, we were on Earth before they went extinct. We would have been in danger but we were in Africa, separated by an ocean from these terrifying ancestors of modern birds.

Height comparison of four Terror Birds (illustration from Wikimedia Commons, includes accuracy note)

DNA studies in 2024 refined the phylogenetic supertree of birds placing Terror Birds as ancestors in the clade Australaves, the group that evolved in South America and Australia. Click on the image below to see a larger version of the diagram.

Phylogenetic supertree by Stiller, J., Feng, S., Chowdhury, AA. *et al.* Complexity of avian evolution revealed by family-level genomes. *Nature* 629, 851–860 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07323-1

Because the diagram has hundreds of tiny details I’ve hand-drawn the Terror Bird section starting with their nearest living relative, the seriema. Notice who else is descended from the Terror Birds!

Australaves descended from the Terror Birds, drawn by Kate St. John, derived fromphylogenetic supertree by Stiller, J., Feng, S., Chowdhury, AA. *et al.* Complexity of avian evolution revealed by family-level genomes. *Nature* 629, 851–860 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07323-1

Let’s take a photographic journey through the tree.

First come the seriemas, who stand alone without other relatives. These South American birds have a lifestyle and appearance similar to the secretarybird of Africa, though they are not related. Here a red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata) kills a snake.