Outside My Window

Tentworms starting up: Raccoon Creek Wildflower Reserve, 20 April 2026 (photo by Kate St. John) 29 April 2026 Nine days ago I saw the first tentworms on a small choke cherry tree at Raccoon Wildflower Preserve. Since then I expected tents to appear on many trees and am disappointed that they haven’t yet. When they do, yellow-billed cuckoos won’t be far behind. Eastern tent caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum) are native moths with a one year life cycle. In the spring the mother moth lays a big…

Ecco and 4 “kids” watch as Carla arrives with food, 27 April 2026, 3:30pm (photo from the National Aviary falconcam at Univ of Pittsburgh) 28 April 2026 Yesterday afternoon the fourth and last egg hatched at the Pitt peregrine nest high atop the Cathedral of Learning. It’s emergence was evident at 1:05pm when Carla pulled the eggshell out from under her. 4th eggshell appears at Pitt peregrine nest, 27 April 2026, 1:05pm Twenty minutes later we could see the fourth chick drying to the left of…

Carla feeds her 3 chicks at the Cathedral of Learning nest, 26 April 2026, 1:51pm (snapshot from the National Aviary falconcam at Univ of Pittsburgh) 27 April 2026 Every day is pretty much the same for the three chicks at the Pitt peregrine nest: eat and sleep. While they sleep we can’t see them because their mother Carla broods them. However, they were visible yesterday at 1:51pm as they nodded off waiting for a long feeding session to begin. 3 chicks waiting for food to arrive, 26 April 2026,…

Goldenseal, 20 April 2026 (photo by Kate St. John) 26 April 2026 Hatch Day preempted Saturday’s usual Seen This Week, so today we’ll take a look at Spring in photos Seen Last Week. Raccoon Creek State Park Goldenseal Maidenhair fern Dwarf larkspur Frick Park: Golden ragwort Schenley Park Fleabane, an alien with pretty pink accents Fringetree Jack in the pulpit — from the top and under the spathe Maidenhair fern, 20 April 2026 (photo by Kate St. John) Dwarf larkspur, Racoon Creek Wildflower…

First Pitt peregrine chick of 2026 with 3 remaining eggs + eggshell, 25 April 2026, 3:38am (photo from the National Aviary snapshot camera at Univ of Pittsburgh via John English) 25 April 2026 Carla and Ecco’s first hatchling of 2026 emerged last night at 11:03pm at the Cathedral of Learning peregrine nest. Hours later Carla stepped away and John English captured our first look at the bright-eyed chick (photo above and below). The chick’s eggshell is discarded in front and he’s propped on the…

What’s she looking at? Carla huddles over the eggs, 11:42am, 23 April 2026 (photo from the National Aviary snapshot camera at Univ of Pittsburgh) Friday, 24 April 2026 Since Thursday morning Carla has been very fidgety on the eggs, often hunched over them with her back feathers raised and her wings in a protective position. Before she settles down she rocks side to side and peers under her belly. What is she looking at? Carla can hear one or more of her chicks tapping inside their eggshells,…

Poison ivy! New leaves are shiny, older leaves are not, Frick Park, 19 April 2026 (photo by Kate St. John) 23 April 2026 Irritants? Yes there are many, but I’m talking about plants. Despite our highly variable weather, some very irritating plants are growing well. Last Sunday, 19 April, I found poison ivy boasting an assortment of new and mature leaves. Just a week earlier, all its leaves were new. Poison ivy! New leaves in Frick Park, 12 April 2026 (photo by Kate St. John) Some people say you…

Greek Valerian on a Spring day at Brush Creek, 16 April 2026 (photo from Kate St. John) 22 April 2026, Earth Day Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. Pittsburgh had all four seasons in just four days, 17 to 20 April, 2026. The graph below shows the rising and falling temperature in pale blue. 17 April: Spring, though a bit warm 18 April: Summer with a high of 82°F 19 April: Autumn low of 39°F, high 51°F 20 April: Winter. It certainly felt like winter! Low 34°F, high 47°F with a stiff wind that dropped…

Peregrine at Tarentum Bridge, 28 Mar 2026 (photo by Dave Brooke) 20 April 2026 Peregrine falcons are incubating at many sites in Southwestern Pennsylvania and eggs have already hatched at Tarentum Bridge. Here’s a summary of the latest news. Peregrine territories in southwestern PA, May 2025 (markup by Kate St. John) Map legend: Dark blue=bridge sites, Red=building sites, Pale blue=no success in 2025 Site List and latest activity. Yellow=fledglings last year. Scroll to see entire spreadsheet…

video embedded from PixCams on YouTube (5:40 minutes) 20 April 2026 Bald eagles eat fish and so do people. Unfortunately our fishing gear can kill eagles with fish hooks that tear the digestive system, lead sinkers that cause lead poisoning, and monofilament that entangles and strangles. We usually don’t see what happens when fishing gear meets wildlife but on Saturday morning 18 April the danger was live on the USS Irvin eaglecam. That morning Irv, the father eagle, brought in a freshly caught…

Carla flies to defend her nest during Pitt peregrine banding on 21 May 2025 (photo by Jeff Cieslak) 19 April 2026 If my guess is right Carla and Ecco’s eggs will begin to hatch next weekend. While we’re waiting for that event let’s take a look at last year’s nesting season displayed in: A slideshow of 2025’s successful nest, A recap of highlights, and Two videos from the National Aviary falconcam. Slideshow of the 2025 nesting season at the Cathedral of Learning. Photos by National Aviary…

18 April 2026 Seen this week. All photos are my own. Urban Wildlife: Here’s what I saw, literally outside my window, in 10 minutes on Thursday 16 April. That dot on Central Catholic High School’s cross is a red-tailed hawk. A pair is nesting within sight of the cross … but where? Three deer crossed … Continue reading Seen This Week: Flowers, Leaves & Urban Wildlife →

17 April 2026 Do you need a break from stress and pressure? This 4-minute video will sooth your day. Listen to the special songs we hear in southwestern Pennsylvania in mid-April as migratory birds sing on their way north. Recorded by Lesley the Bird Nerd in late May or very early June 2025 in Ontario, … Continue reading Birdsong to Sooth Your Day →

16 April 2026 Who’s singing now? In mid April we hear the usual suspects — American robin, northern cardinal, house finch, song sparrow — but there are new additions to the soundscape. Ruby-crowned kinglets (Corthylio calendula) are passing through for a couple of weeks on their way to their breeding grounds in Canada. They’re almost … Continue reading Who’s Singing Now? →

15 April 2026 Brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) are the blackbird we love to hate. The female never builds a nest but instead lays her eggs in the nests of smaller birds who feed her hungry chick while their own eggs and chicks die. This nesting strategy evolved from the cowbirds’ historically close association with grazing … Continue reading The Cowbird’s Mobile Lek →

14 April 2026 Most trees in western Pennsylvania have trunks that taper gradually from the ground to the first large branches. Some have a few lumpy above-ground roots but our tree trunks generally look like the white oak at left below. Buttress roots — the vertical flanges on the tree at top — are so … Continue reading Why Do Trees Have Buttress Roots? →

13 April 2026 You’ve probably heard of “Dress for Success” career advice. Today we’ll explore dressing for outdoor success to avoid Lyme disease. This spring there are so many black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) that unless you are vigilant it’s very easy to get a tick on your body, be bitten, and quite possibly get Lyme … Continue reading Dress for Tick Season →

12 April 2026 Adam Knoerzer monitoring every day. On 9 March he watched them fly around their territory and on 19 March he saw them bowing at the nest. But on 2 April Adam wrote, “Dead quiet all week at East Liberty. Haven’t seen a single falcon the three times I’ve dropped by this week … Continue reading East Liberty Peregrines’ Nest is Gone →

11 April 2026 Despite temperatures that dipped into the upper 20s on Wednesday, spring is still making progress in Pittsburgh. This week I found more flowers and leaves. Though they don’t look like flowers these yellow-orange structures are the inflorescence of bear corn (Conopholis americana, formerly squaw root), a underground non-photosynthesizing plant that is parasitic … Continue reading Seen This Week: More Flowers and Leaves →

10 April 2026 Last year in early April Dana Nesiti was filming great-horned owl siblings in Schenley Park but this year their nest is gone and the owls have relocated. I don’t know where. Instead Dana has found a red-tailed hawk nest where the pair is incubating eggs. Red-tailed hawks are the most common hawk … Continue reading Red-Tails Nesting in Schenley Park →

9 April 2026 In just three weeks there’s been a dramatic change in the number and mix of mallards seen at Duck Hollow. In mid-March I reliably saw at least 20 from the parking lot and almost all were in pairs. At the end of March I watched a female checking out the thickets near … Continue reading Urban Mallards Are Nesting Already →

8 April 2026 Tonight’s weather looks encouraging for bird migration over southwestern Pennsylvania. BirdCast’s forecast map shows them streaming from Texas to upstate New York along the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. Oh boy! We’ll see new birds tomorrow. The expected woodland migrants are still the same species as last week. Fox sparrows and golden-crowned kinglets … Continue reading Migration Looks Good Tonight, New Birds Tomorrow! →

7 April 2026 Heads up: If you don’t like snakes you won’t want to look at this. 😮 Perhaps you’ve seen a garter snake stand up to look over the grass. But this small feat is nothing to what this snake did at the zoo. Eventually it swayed too far to the left and … … Continue reading How Does a Snake Stand Up Like a Flagpole? →

6 April 2026 40 years ago today, on 6 April 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant at Pripyat in the Soviet Union exploded in the worst nuclear disaster and the most expensive disaster of any kind in history. At the time, Chernobyl was in the Soviet Union. Five years later, in December 1991, the Soviet … Continue reading 40 Years Later: Is The Milk Still Radioactive? →

Easter Day, 5 April 2026 This native lily is blooming on today at Fall Run Park in Glenshaw, PA. I found it yesterday while looking for Louisiana warblers (Parkesia motacilla), whom we heard but never saw. Trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) grow from 1/2″ to 1″ oval underground corms buried very deeply compared to other lily … Continue reading An Easter Trout Lily →

4 April 2026 Woodlots in the City are greening up with the first tentative leaves … … and full leaf on the yellow buckeyes in Schenley Park. New flowers bloomed in the summer-like heat: Virginia bluebells near the Visitors Center and a star magnolia near the Westinghouse memorial. The star magnolia’s flowers were in bud … Continue reading Seen This Week: Greening Up →

3 April 2026 Yesterday morning, 2 April at 9:20am, the first egg hatched at the Glen Hazel (Hays) bald eagle nest. This video shows a closeup of the chick emerging from the egg. Notice the mother eagle’s talons and feet near the egg. She is so large and the chick is so small. About 40 … Continue reading First 2026 Eaglet Hatches at Glen Hazel (Hays) →

2 April 2026 Now that it’s early April a whole new set of birds is expected to arrive on migration. Here are three woodland birds to look for this coming week. Louisiana waterthrushes (Parkesia motacilla), pictured at top, first arrived in southwestern Pennsylvania on Monday 30 March, basically right on time. They were reported in … Continue reading Woodland Birds Expected This Week →

1 April 2026 On April Fool’s Day 2008 the BBC published a tongue-in-cheek video about the “discovery” of a flock of flying penguins who migrate to the rainforests of South America. Notice how the background documentary-type music sucks you in to make it more believable. This has gotta be real, right? The music says it … Continue reading April Fool: Making Penguins Fly →

31 March 2026 Yesterday on McMichael Road at Conneaut Marsh we saw thousands of ducks and were serenaded by the jingling sound of spring peepers, the quacking of wood frogs, and a mysterious growl that reminded me of anhinga courtship. Using frog-call phenology from earlier this month (From Peepers to Bullfrogs: Here’s Who Sings When) … Continue reading Growling Leopards →