8 October 2024
Hen migration used to be intense over Pittsburgh on Friday night time, 4 October, when greater than 20,000 songbirds flew south overhead. We noticed the consequences on Saturday morning in Frick Park the place a brand new cohort of species had arrived with just right information: A few of them had been consuming noticed lanternflies!
The brand new species integrated ruby-crowned kinglets, white-throated sparrows, yellow-bellied sapsuckers and yellow-rumped (myrtle) warblers. The combo used to be somewhat a transformation from September’s warblers.
Many of the new arrivals had been feeding on tiny bugs however the juvenile sapsucker, pictured above, used to be interested in candy lanternfly honeydew on ailanthus bushes. He used to be too younger to have ever observed a noticed lanternfly however he used to be curious. “Are those suitable for eating?”
Sure.
In all probability the sapsucker were given the speculation from a northern cardinal that ate a lanternfly additional down the path. (I don’t have a photograph of that incident; this one is from iNaturalist, New York.)
matthew_wills by the use of iNaturalist)
Olive-sided flycatchers consume noticed lanternflies, too, although they don’t give a contribution a lot as a result of they’re uncommon in Pittsburgh.
Alternatively, when an olive-sided flycatcher used to be passing thru Howard County, Maryland in early September Mei Shyong photographed it consuming a noticed lanternfly. The thumbnail under is only a trace. Click on right here or at the symbol to look her photograph at Howard County Concervancy on Fb.
