All proper, fellow chook followers. There’s a giant recreation this weekend that includes the Birds, certain. We’re sporting inexperienced and rooting for Jalen Hurts and Autumn Lockwood — the primary Black girl teaching within the Tremendous Bowl — and we’re dipping chips in dip.
However how a lot are you aware in regards to the different varieties of birds? Sure, I’m speaking about literal feathers, beaks, eggs, the entire 9 (or given Sunday’s recreation, ought to we are saying 100) yards. Birds endure. They adapt. There are such a lot of causes to like them.
These different eagles
Pennsylvania is house to 2 species of eagles: the bald eagle and the golden eagle. In 1983, there have been solely three bald eagle nests left in Pennsylvania. By 2013, because of the mixed efforts of the Canadian authorities and the Pennsylvania Recreation Fee to reintroduce the species, that quantity had rebounded to 300 nests statewide.
You’ll be able to watch a livestream of two energetic bald eagle nests, the Farm Nation Eagles on the high of a sycamore tree in an undisclosed, rural a part of the state, and the Hanover Eagle at Codorus State Park. Bald eagle nests are huge — about 5 toes excessive and a couple of toes large, the biggest of any North American chook. Feminine members of each species must be laying their eggs quickly.
Golden eagles are migratory birds; they lay their eggs within the forests of northeastern Canada and journey south alongside the Appalachian Mountains to spend the winter in Virginia and West Virginia. In Pennsylvania, you possibly can catch a glimpse of those eagles heading south between mid-October and early December, and on their means north in March and April. Most sightings happen within the Ridge and Valley Province between the Allegheny Entrance and the Kittatinny Ridge.
‘Very good Owls’
Any dialogue of birds and the Tremendous Bowl could be incomplete with out a nod to the Very good Owls amongst us. In line with Know Your Meme, the earliest recognized use of this (maybe unintended) anagram on-line was in 2008, when Twitter person @shawnw exclaimed: “Very good Owl celebration tonight!”
Sure, owls are very good. Yearly, on this Sunday in February, I stay up for individuals posting their favourite poems and pictures and enjoyable information about owls in tandem with the soccer celebrations. Pennsylvania has eight species of owl, every glorious in its personal proper.
Barn owls have lengthy legs, a golden-brown higher, and a heart-shaped face. They like open fields, the place they will discover small mammals to snack on. Barn owl populations in Pennsylvania have been declining for a number of many years because of the lack of farmland and grassland habitats for searching. These owls don’t hoot; they hiss and scream.
Japanese screech owls stay in tree hollows in cemeteries, metropolis parks, and alongside the sides of streams — wherever there’s a great place to nest and dine. They eat every thing from grasshoppers to moths, mice, squirrels, rabbits, blue jays, and crayfish. Screech owls hunt by sitting on a department after which pouncing on their prey from above. For those who’d like to ask a screech owl into your yard, one of the best ways is to construct a nest field.
Nice horned owls have a deep hoot, a yellow-eyed stare, and are sometimes called the “tiger of the air” for his or her ferocious searching expertise. Their heads can swivel greater than 180 levels.
Snowy owls are native to the Arctic tundra, however they typically journey south within the winter to search out meals and lightweight. Final February, one touched down on a discipline in Lancaster County, although that is uncommon.
Barred owls are nice singers, distinctive for his or her name: “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?”
Lengthy-eared owls are nocturnal hunters who love consuming mice, typically nest in evergreen conifers, and are threatened in Pennsylvania.
Brief-eared owls spend their winters in Pennsylvania’s farmlands and wetlands, nest on the bottom, and are on the state’s endangered species record — primarily as a result of their nesting habitats have been misplaced to growth.
Northern saw-whet owls are tiny — solely 7 to eight inches tall — and they’re nocturnal, in order that they’re robust to see. The smallest Pennsylvania owl lives in dense woodlands, and so they hunt and roost near the bottom.
Let’s face it, all of those Pennsylvania owls (and eagles) are fairly very good. Sunday or any day, go birds — and go Birds.