I did not take this photo of a black-throated blue warbler (it’s from Wikimedia) but this gives you an idea of how close the warblers were at Magee Marsh Boardwalk on Thursday evening 8 May. I drove home yesterday before The Biggest Week in American Birding got fully underway, but I can tell you that attendees will have great looks at beautiful birds on the Boardwalk this coming week.
Meanwhile I saw a few other things last week including this rain-touched golden ragwort at Brush Creek in Beaver County, PA.
Golden ragwort, Brush Creek Park, Beaver County, 4 May 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
At Pearson Metropark, Toledo on 8 May: Wild geranium, jack-in-the-pulpit and starry false Solomon’s seal.
Wild geranium, Pearson Metropark, 8 May 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)Jack in the pulpit, Pearson Metropark, 8 May 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)Starry false Solomon’s seal, Pearson Metropark, 8 May 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
The sky was cool at the end of the day.
Sunset at Maumee Bay Lodge, 8 May 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
And in Jeff Cieslak tradition, I’ll show you that my car reached a milestone on 8 May 2025. My Prius is 15 years old.
155,000 miles on the Prius odometer and still going strong, 8 May 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Redbud blooming on Clyde Street, 8 April 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
12 April 2025
A week ago it rained and rained. All that water had to go somewhere and by Monday I could tell it had made it to the Monongahela River at Duck Hollow.
The mud bar at the mouth of Nine Mile Run was covered with fast moving water. A mallard barely had to paddle as he zoomed by.
Monongahela River running high, 7 April 2025 (video by Kate St. John)
Leafout continued with these box elder leaves at Herr’s Island on 9 April. Notice that they have the same 3-leaf arrangement as poison ivy but their shape indicates they are box elder.
Box elder leafing out at Herr’s Island, 9 April 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
If it wasn’t raining it drizzled for most of the week. On Wednesday 9 April, rain and drizzle kept these tulips closed …
Tulips closed against the rain, 10 April 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
… and the dusk-like conditions prompted seven deer to graze in full view behind Frick Fine Arts. These two didn’t care that I was looking at them. The other five crossed the driveway and melted down the hillside edge.
2 of 7 deer behind Frick Fine Arts, 10 April 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
p.s. If all seven are pregnant does we can expect the herd to number 14-21 deer by the end of May.
Tulips in a garden in Shadyside, 3 April 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
5 April 2025, 6am
This week the tulips bloomed on Thursday, and then it rained and rained.
There are lots of showy tulips in Oakland and Shadyside where there are no deer to eat them.
Tulips on Fifth Avenue, 3 April 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Rain! Pittsburgh received 1.33 inches of rain in the past 36 hours so that, by 6am this morning, NOAA predicts minor flooding at the Point, the head of the Ohio. Of course that could change.
Ohio River at Pittsburgh flood gauge prediction as of 5 April 2025, 6am
Other parts of the country from Ohio and Kentucky to Arkansas are not so lucky. The purple spots on the map below are Major Flooding areas.
Rain gauge holding three types of precipitation (photo from Marianne Atkinson, Dubois PA)
23 March 2025
Whether it rains or snows, sleets or hails, after the event the National Weather Service can tell you how much precipitation fell in your neighborhood.
For example, after Hurricane Sandy plowed through Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in late October 2012, the National Weather Service (NWS) published this Actual Rainfall map showing a maximum of 12.83″ at Bellevue, Maryland and about 3″ in Pittsburgh.
NWS can do this thanks to radar estimates from airports which are later updated by actual rain gauge readings from official weather stations and from volunteers across the country. The volunteers are members of the Community Collaborative Rain Hail and Snow network or CoCoRaHS.
This month CoCoRaHS is holding their annual Rain Gauge Rally in which each state competes to add new volunteers to the network. As of 11 March the network in Pennsylvania looks likes this. Notice it is heavily populated in some areas but sparse elsewhere. Volunteers needed!
CoCoRaHS network in PA as of 11 March 2025
My friend Marianne from DuBois PA joined in 2023 and is encouraging others to join the network this month. She writes:
I have been a CoCoRaHS volunteer since July 2023. This is citizen science that is easy and fun! It is cool that I am able to contribute data to many weather organizations with one daily reading. Even a daily gauge reading of 0 is important, which could indicate drought conditions. Volunteers report their daily observations on the interactive Website or using the CoCoRaHS mobile App. The picture is my rain gauge on Feb. 6, 2025 that has one inch of snow, sleet and freezing rain combined!
— email from Marianne in March 2025
It’s easy to join! Click here and they walk you through the sign-up.
Still curious? This 6-minute YouTube video describes CoCoRaHS and this month’s Rain Gauge Rally. If you want to join, don’t delay. Get in on the Rain Gauge March Madness!
p.s. CoCoRaHS is free to join but you will need a 4” manual rain gauge (or the NWS 8- inch gauge). If you don’t have one, here’s where to get one at weatheryourway.com. (This screenshot does not show the entire page.)
Great horned owlet on a branch, Schenley Park, 12 March 2025 (digiscoped by Kate St. John)
The owlet spent Thursday well camouflaged on an inaccessible-to-humans cliff ledge. On Friday she was in a tree, see photograph at top. Juvenile owls use their claws to climb trees. (Note: in case you hear people calling her Muppet, Tamarack gave her that nickname.)
Mercury and Venus
After sunset on 9 March I noticed a bright planet in the west with a divot out of the top of it like a phase of the moon. It was Venus about to set. How did I live this long without knowing that Venus has phases?
When I digiscoped Venus I saw a shadowy planet next to it. Mercury was also about to set, pinkish and to the left of Venus whose brightness plays havoc with my optics.
Mercury and Venus with a divot off the top, 9 March 2025 (digiscoped by Kate St. John)
Here’s a view that shows Venus a bit better.
Mercury and Venus, 9 March 2025 (digiscoped by Kate St. John)
Incipient Spring flowers and leaves
Incipient is a good word to describe spring flower and leaf status this week. As of Thursday 13 March spring was “in an initial stage; beginning to happen or develop.”
Common whitlowgrass blooming in Aspinwall, 11 March 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Common whitlowgrass (Draba verna), a member of the cabbage family, blooms very early. It is native to Europe, western Asia and North Africa and is now spread around the world.
Honeysuckle leaves were just beginning to open on Thursday.
Incipient honeysuckle leaves in Greenfield, 13 March 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
And the Cornelian cherry tree near Panther Hollow Lake had a single tiny flower open in the bud.
Incipient Cornelian cherry flowers, Schenley Park, 13 March 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
All of these plants are from other continents and they start blooming sooner than our native plants.
After yesterday’s very warm weather everything else will speed up.
The mountain of ice on Lake Superior was glacial blue in the distance, 16 Feb 2014. People provide some scale (photo by Kate St. John)
27 February 2025
This morning I am in Duluth, Minnesota where today’s temperature will range from 30°F to 39°F, far warmer than my last visit in February 2014 when it was –16°F to 0°F.
That was the winter of the Polar Vortex when it was so cold for so long that Lake Superior froze solid — a rare occurrence because it is so deep. When our birding group reached the shore we saw big hills of ice and very few birds. So we got out of the van and climbed the lake.
Standing on Lake Superior’s ice while I take this photo of the mountain of ice in the distance, 16 Feb 2014 (photo by Kate St. John)
This week I won’t be climbing the lake because nearly all of it is open water (shades of blue on the map). In fact, as of last Saturday, total ice cover for all five lakes is only 38.5% (gray and black on the map).
This week was cold in Pittsburgh but no snow after Monday so I was surprised on Friday when my mother said she had 12″ of snow at her home in Virginia Beach.
Early this week I was relieved to see that a severe winter storm was going to pass south of Pennsylvania and so I ignored it.
But it couldn’t be ignored south of here. The colored dots on this map are 4-12 inches of snow falling between noon on Tuesday 18 Feb and noon Friday 21 Feb. The time span doesn’t even include the start of the storm!
Gull: Since most of the rain will fall south of here the Monongahela River will rise again. It was falling last Tuesday when I photographed one of the many ring-billed gulls at Duck Hollow. This one seemed to be asking, “Do you have food for me?” Someone had left birdseed on the trash can cover.
4 Merlins: Yesterday I went to the Bob O’Connor Golf Course at Schenley Park half an hour before sunset to see if I could find the two merlins who usually hang out there. As soon as I arrived one flew in and landed on the highest pine in the Palmer Loop Practice Area north of Schenley Drive.
Merlin atop an evergreen, Schenley golf course, 14 Feb 2025, 5:22pm (photo by Kate St. John)Zoomed cellphone photo: 1 of 4 merlins at Schenley golf course, 14 Feb 2025, 5:15-6:05pm (photo by Kate St. John)
Soon a second merlin landed on top of the tallest tree, a bare tree between holes 8 and 9. I walked a big circle to check for songbirds and saw the first merlin in an intense chase with a third. On my way back to the car I found a fourth(!) and was able to stand in one spot and see all four merlins at the same time.
Four is unusual but I remember a time, perhaps in the late 1990s, when Bill Hintze first found merlins at the golf course. In those days there were sometimes as many as four.
60 Feet into Ohio: On Monday 10 Feb four of us went birding on the Stavich Bike Trail in Lawrence County PA to do a Winter Survey for the Third PA Breeding Bird Atlas. We were ready to head back to the car when I realized we were only a half mile from Ohio. So we kept going, crossed the state line and walked 60 feet into Ohio.
Ta dah! Here we are just inside Pennsylvania. Best Bird: a white-crowned sparrow.
Birding with friends (Donna, Kate, Debbie, Linda) in PA at the Ohio state line, 10 Feb 2025 (photo by Donna Foyle)
Bonus Picture — great horned owlet: Here’s another owlet baby picture from Tues 11 Feb. The white fluff in front of the mother owl is the owlet’s head facing left with its eyes closed.
Great horned owl nest with mother and owlet, Schenley Park, 11 Feb 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Extensive winter damage frost crack in a black cherry tree, Hays Woods, 2 Feb 2024 (photo by Linda Roth)
9 February 2025
On a walk in Hays Woods on 2 February, Linda Roth and fellow hikers found a few severely damaged trees with long vertical cracks in their bark and trunks. What made the trees split like this?
Extensive winter damage frost crack in a black cherry tree, Hays Woods, 2 Feb 2024 (photo by Linda Roth)
One of the most common reasons for cracks and splits on tree trunks is cold temperature. Frost cracks are caused when the inner and outer wood in the tree’s trunk expands and contracts at different rates when temperatures change. This happens when winter temperatures plummet below zero especially after a sunny day when a tree’s trunk has been warmed by the sun. The different expansion rates between the inner and outer wood can cause such a strain on the trunk that a crack develops.
January’s weather was extreme enough to cause the damage. It was 43°F on the 18th, then plummeted below zero a few days later.
Frost cracks occur suddenly, can be several feet long, and are often accompanied by a loud rifle shot sound. They often originate at a point where the trunk has been physically injured in the past. Maples and sycamores are the most prone to frost cracks. Apples, ornamental crabapple, ash, beech, horse chestnut and tulip tree are also susceptible. Isolated trees and trees growing on poorly drained soils are particularly prone to frost cracks.
You know it’s cold when the trees crack and explode. According to Wikipedia, the Sioux and Cree called the first full moon of January “The moon of cold-exploding trees.”
