A Phenology for late November and early December

southwestern Pennsylvania

Chuck Tague

Look for rafts of ducks, long nights, snow squalls and leftover turkey

It’s the middle of November.  Keep warm and give thanks for the beauty and bounty of nature.  Trees are leafless.  Morning frost is the norm.  Bird feeders buzz.  What can we look forward to in the next few weeks?

How about snow?  There are still a few of us old enough to remember Thanksgiving, 1950.  That day 27.4" of snow fell, Pittsburgh’s largest one day snowfall.

Click here for today’s Nature Observer Almanac

When temperatures are low and humidity high, look for rime frost.  Rime, a feathery accumulation of ice on solid objects, results from the sudden freezing of fog.  Rime builds outward in the face of the wind and creates mystical crystal landscapes.  Accumulated rime ice can be heavy enough to crush shrubs and snap tree limbs.

Get out early after the first clear, calm, cold night.  If a thin layer of ice forms on ponds and lakes, you may hear the ice “sing.”

Keep your hummingbird feeders up and full.  Banders from Powdermill Nature Reserve have banded several Rufous Hummingbirds in the area.  For information on what to do if a winter hummingbird comes to you feeder, check out the Hummer Bird Study Group website.

Waterfowl migration is always the highlight of November.

Wood Duck pair

What can you expect on a good day of waterfowl watching?

From the Nature Observer News, November 2004:

Orderly lines of geese descend into cacophonic chaos as they hit the water.  “V”s of swans pass, often undetected, through the gray overhead.  Mallards and Great Blue Herons flap along ragged banks.  The short wings of Buffleheads and Hooded Mergansers whir frantically as they race upstream.  Rafts of diving ducks drift out of an icy mist -- Greater Scaup, Ring-necked Ducks, goldeneye, Red-breasted Merganser, more Bufflehead, maybe a Canvasback or two.  With a quick wave of webbed feet divers disappear beneath the surface.  Others emerge with startling suddenness.  They stretch their necks, puff up their breasts and flap their comically short wings triumphantly.  Impatient males dip, bow and pose.

Read the entire essay in my blog of November 14.

 

Click here for a checklist of western Pennsylvania waterfowl.

Expect more Common Loons.  Red-throated Loons are a great find.  Looking ahead, will the Great Lakes freeze over and send flocks of Red-necked Grebes to Pennsylvania?

Golden Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks continue to pass the Allegheny Front through December.

According to observers in Ontario, Minnesota, Michigan and Connecticut, Snowy Owls are on the move.  Reports from the north indicate the rodents in the boreal forest and on the tundra are at the low point of their population cycle.  Will any Snowy Owls make it to western Pennsylvania?  It’s a good bet that one or more will show up soon at Presque Isle.  Where else might these phantoms of the tundra appear?  Just about anywhere.  I photographed this one on November 16, 2000 on the campus of Duquesne University.  Two nights before it was spotted on the roof of Kaufmann’s Department store in Downtown Pittsburgh.

To learn more about Snowy Owls, and listen to their call, click here.

Read an essay on Snowy Owls from the Nature Observer News archives.

Check groves of pine and spruces for owls, especially Long-eared and Northern Saw-whet Owls.  Look for tell-tale splashes of white-wash and piles of pellets, feathers and bones under daytime roosts.  Check fields, especially reclaimed strip mines for Short-eared Owls and Northern Harriers.  Look for Rough-legged Hawks at Pymatuning, the Imperial grasslands and around farms that are not too mowed and manicured.

Indications are there should be Northern Shrikes in western Pennsylvania this winter.

Look for American Goldfinches and American Tree Sparrows feeding in weedy patches.  Pine Siskins will continue.  Keep an eye out for White-winged Crossbills.  Large flocks are moving through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Common Redpolls are also a possibility.  For the background on this year’s movement of northern irruptives, go to Ron Pittaway’s Finch Forecast. 

It’s time to scan for Horned Larks, Lapland Longspurs and Snow Buntings.  Check open areas such as recently plowed (and manured) fields, fields with low grass, sandy beaches, shorelines and large gravel parking lots.

Snow Bunting

In November there’s a daily freeze/thaw cycle that softens crabapples and other fruit with hard pulp.  This is when birds find them the most appealing.  Around my neighborhood, Mt. Washington, chaotic flocks of starlings, robins and Cedar Waxwings usually converge on the flowering crabs during the last week of November for an avian Thanksgiving feast.

Cedar Waxwing

Will the robins and waxwings stay through the winter?  Will the supply of winter fruit hold out?  Other birds that depend on winter fruit are Eastern Bluebirds, Hermit Thrushes, Yellow-rumped Warblers and Northern Mockingbirds.  Other fruit sources are honeysuckle, roses (especially the dreaded Multi-flora Rose), hawthorns, viburnums, wild grape, hollies and Poison Ivy.  Sumacs are usually a low preference until spring.

Asiatic Bittersweet berries are very colorful now, as are barberries, honeysuckle, Highbush Cranberries and hollies.

Watch for beaver sign. My field book from December 3, 1994 notes heavy activity along the creek in the Wildflower Reserve, Raccoon Creek State Park.  Fresh stumps of American Beech, Ironwood and American Hornbeam lined the high stream bank.  On Presque Isle I found a cottonwood tree, about ten inches in diameter, felled along an inland pond.  A twelve foot length of trunk as well as all the accessible branches had been gnawed clean.

The beaver is the largest rodent in North America weighing 40 to 60 pounds.  Active all year, their main winter food is the inner bark of deciduous trees.  In late autumn beavers busily prepare by stockpiling green sticks underwater near their lodge or burrow.  Water temperature below the ice will never go below 32°F.  A study cited in “Life in the Cold”, ( Peter Marchand 1991) measured a difference of as much as 63°F between the inside of beaver lodge occupied by two huddling animals and the outside air.  With a good food supply, the beavers need not go out when temperatures are low.

Cold weather is no excuse for us to stay inside.  Take a walk and listen to whistling winds, rustling leaves and chirping birds.  Sounds carry farther without the leaves to muffle them.  Except for Carolina Wrens, few birds are singing.  Most vocalizations are contact and alarm calls, but any bird sound on a cold gray day is a pleasure.

Autumn color has passed its peak but reddish-brown oaks and scattered other colorful trees will continue through November. 

Flowers have mostly finished blooming, but you still may find some late individuals of Queen Anne’s Lace, dandelion, Creeping Wood Sorrel, Common Evening Primrose, several aster species, Witch Hazel and Winter Cress.  Some asters continue well after the frost.  Make a list of November blooming flowers. 

Will any be left in December?

Spotted Knapweed, Nov. 6, 2008, Southside Pittsburgh

Enjoy the winter foliage of evergreen plants such as hemlock and pines, Christmas ferns and club moss.  Club Moss is a slow growing, creeping ground plant.  Its greenery looks better in the forest than in holiday arrangements.

Look for my next phenology around the middle of December, although I will continue to  write blogs and add photo essays.

By mid December, the daylight hours will be at the yearly low, but after dark the cities and suburbs will radiate with holiday lights, our annual celebration of cheap and abundant energy.  Underground, woodchucks will be in a deep sleep. 

*Kate St. John includes a summary of my phenology in her fine blog, Outside My Window.