Outside My Window
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A Bird Blog with Kate St. John. Blogging about birds, nature and peregrine falcons since 2007.
Outside My Window
14h ago
21 March 2025 UPDATE: I WAS WRONG! Carla laid her 3rd egg much earlier than I originally thought. It was before 2:07am on 21 March 2025. I had expected Carla to lay her third egg last evening but it took a longer than expected. As early as 8pm she looked like she was ready to ..read more
Outside My Window
1d ago
20 March 2025 Schenley Owlet flying The Schenley Park owlet, who spent two weeks in rehab at Tamarack and came home on 11 March, has been making fast progress. Many have seen her roosting in trees this week and assume she must have flown to get there, but we never see it. She only moves ..read more
Outside My Window
3d ago
18 March 2025 This afternoon Carla got into position at the Cathedral of Learning to lay her second egg of the 2025 season. In the slideshow you see her standing upright with her tail down. After the egg is laid she tips up so her tail feathers don’t drag on the wet egg. (photos from ..read more
Outside My Window
3d ago
18 March 2025 The peregrines at East Liberty Presbyterian Church steeple are very active as they prepare to nest. A week ago on 11 March Jeff Cieslak stopped by and found both birds at home. He caught one in the act of landing on its favorite floodlight. And Jeff saw them doing a lot of ..read more
Outside My Window
4d ago
17 March 2025 Happy St. Patrick’s Day! St. Patrick’s and Ireland’s shamrock symbol is a leaf cluster of either lesser clover or white clover. We don’t see much lesser clover (Trifolium dubium) in the U.S. but we used to have lots of white clover. When I was a child our lawns were a mixture of ..read more
Outside My Window
5d ago
16 March 2025 Today at 1:17pm Carla laid her first egg of the year at Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning peregrine nest. The Pittsburgh area and large swaths of western PA and neighboring states were under a Tornado Watch at the time. The first heavy downpour and lightning had passed when Carla arrived at the nest ..read more
Outside My Window
5d ago
16 March 2025 When a female peregrine is getting ready to lay eggs she spends the night at the nest ledge. As egg laying becomes imminent she doesn’t have far to go to crouch over the scrape. Last night Carla spent five hours at the nest and, from the start Ecco encouraged her to do ..read more
Outside My Window
6d ago
15 March 2025 The great horned owlet that fell from its nest in Schenley Park and was returned on 11 March was relatively easy to find on Wednesday, posed like a statue on a sloping tree branch (below). The owlet spent Thursday well camouflaged on an inaccessible-to-humans cliff ledge. On Friday she was in a ..read more
Outside My Window
1w ago
14 March 2025 I’ve seen a lot of ravens in the past two weeks — 11 in Minnesota, two as we landed at Pittsburgh airport, and one over Aspinwall on Tuesday. When I found Vance Crofoot’s 3-minute video explaining raven territories I was fascinated. Here’s what we learned: The first comment on the video points ..read more
Outside My Window
1w ago
13 March 2025 Owls have excellent eyesight but they see the world differently than we do. When we look straight ahead (fixation point below) our peripheral vision allows us to faintly see our hand waving near our ear — a 200-220° field of view. Owls have binocular vision similar to ours but their peripheral vision ..read more