A good eye on Appalachian wildlife

A young Eastern golden eagle bats off a bald eagle in a photo captured by a West Virginia trail camera, one of 40 across Appalachia involved in the first comprehensive photographic study of wildlife in the mountains.

By Scott Beveridge

AVELLA, Pa.  – Dave Scofield keeps his eye on the berm for fresh road-kill deer while he drives to work at a national treasure famous for its archaeological breakthrough.

Scofield looks for small deer carcasses to use as bait at the site of a new trail camera set up to photograph wildlife in a remote location at Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Museum of Rural Life, where he works as executive director.

"It's fun," Scofield said, before retrieving the memory card Feb. 4 from the infrared camera rigged to take photos when a predator moves in to dine on one of the decaying deer. "You never know what you are going to get."

Dave Scofield, executive director of Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Museum of Rural Life in Avella, Pa., right, removes a memory card from a trail camera making a record of the wildlife in this section of Appalachia. The project is led by assistant West Virginia University research professor Todd Katzner, who is checking the roadkill deer used as bait for the camera. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Meadowcroft received the camera in December as part of a five-year, six-state study at West Virginia University to track the winter migration of the eastern golden eagle and create the first comprehensive photographic record of the wildlife in Appalachia. While the camera at the Jefferson Township museum had yet to capture one of the eagles, which nest in Canada, it's the only one in use in Western Pennsylvania for the study.

Scofield did find crows, a red-shouldered hawk, two red-tailed adult hawks and two raccoons among the 44 images the camera recorded over a 24-hour period.

"This is important information for wildlife management folks to know, the distribution of species and statistics on the size of the population," said Todd Katzner, the WVU research assistant professor leading the study.

He was motivated to do the research to determine if the rapid expansion of electric-generating wind turbines in the United States is interfering with the migratory habits of the eagle. At the same time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is circulating a draft conservation plan requiring the wind industry to evaluate impacts on the protected eagles to avoid their colliding with turbines.

So far, the study indicates the size of the golden eagle population might be smaller than first thought. The researchers are among few people who have been banding the eagles. Most of the birds photographed so far wear the bands, which means estimates of a population between 1,000 and 2,000 is inaccurate, Katzner said.

Golden eagles were common in New England until, as with the bald eagle, the pesticide DDT made them extinct in the United States east of the Mississippi River. The pesticide built up through biomagnification in the food chain and caused the eggs of the largest predators to become too thin to survive incubation, Katzner said. The birds are recovering because DDT was banned in the United States in 1972, he said.

"Birds are the first thing to be impacted by industry, pollution," he said. "The eagle population is expanding greatly."

Meanwhile, the golden eagle is lured south of Canada during the winter because the Pennsylvania Game Commission fosters a large white-tailed deer population, which results in a lot of road kill.

"It provides them a winter diet," Katzner said.

The bird is about the same size as the bald eagle, with a body between 30 and 37 inches in length, but has larger, more powerful talons.

The 40 cameras stationed from New York to North Carolina also have been photographing animals that researchers did not know were still in the hills of Appalachia.

One location recorded images of spotted skunks, including one spraying a raccoon.

West Virginia has "almost no information about the spotted skunk," Katzner said. Until this five-year study got under way this year, the only information researchers had about wildlife in the mountains "was from trappers," Katzner said.

"People just love this stuff," he said.

The study also is helping Meadowcroft document how the habitat is being used at the property, where an archaeology dig found it to be the oldest site of human habitation in North America dating back 16,000 years.

"There is a pretty good prehistoric record of what was here," Scofield said.

Among the more than 956,000 artifacts pulled from the rockshelter are remains of passenger pigeons, which were captured and eaten there by animals, he said.

"It's kind of nice to get pictures of the animals that are here now," Scofield added.

(Click here to watch a short video of Katzner discussing his story.)

(This article first appeared in the Observer-Reporter newspaper, Washington, Pa.)

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Indian in feathers

BELLE VERNON, Pa. – Lanny Bradley does some amazing art with real feathers.

But the Rostraver Township man's most-ambitious project has to be the 7-foot Indian, shown above, which he just completed with pheasant, snow geese, duck and quail feathers.

Bradley has logged 280 hours of washing, cleaning, clipping and gluing each feather to the model for the Indian.

He is having a hard time deciding whether to sell or keep the sculpture, but admits everything has a price. Send me an email if you want to make him an offer.

Old Brownsville

This slideshow contains a sample of some of the more than 1,000 old, rare photographs of Brownsville, Pa., that have been donated to the struggling borough along the Monongahela River. The Harold Richardson and Norman "Bill" Patterson collection. Check the Observer-Reporter this Sunday for a feature story on the donation to Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp.

Fiesta® addicts are born here

Stacks of Fiesta® dinnerware are sold below retail prices at the Homer Laughlin China Co. factory store in Newell, W.Va. (Scott Beveridge photo) 

By Scott Beveridge

NEWELL, W.Va. – The vibrant colors of the venerable Fiesta® dinnerware offer the most-logical reason why it has remained on the market and manufactured in the United States for more than eight decades.

The vintage look of the China, as well as its quality, simple design and durability also likely contribute to its popularity and having earned the distinction of being "America's favorite dinnerware."

But the hardcore Fiesta® addicts typically are born after one visit to the company's factory store in Newell, W.Va., along the hard-worn Northern Panhandle shores of the Ohio River,  a clerk there explained last week.

"It's a addiction coming here," she said inside the two-room, no-frills store in a company town that built up around the Homer Laughlin China Co., when it expanded and relocated from across the river in East Liverpool, Ohio. "I don't know why," she said.

Shoppers often head straight to the area off the main showroom, to where four long rows of plates, bowls, vases and pitchers are offered well below retail prices found at such department stores as Macy's and Bloomingdales. Some pieces have slight imperfections while others are first-quality put there for fast sale.

A four-piece setting sells here for under $25 and about $2 less than the same packages is selling this week at 30 percent off full price at a Macy's at Century III Mall south of Pittsburgh. And, the factory store gives one set away free when a customers purchases four of them.

"Grabbing up on the white bowl, huh?" the clerk exclaims as I walk it to the cash register, carrying the unusual, short and wide piece. "It's first quality. I've never seen it in white. It's discontinued."

I bought it, having felt a need to purchase something after making the 63-mile drive here from my house in southwestern Pennsylvania. I had thought about replacing some of the inexpensive, all-white dinnerware in my pantry, with some nicer Fiestaware. It is produced in such bold colors as cinnabar, lemongrass and peacock, and paprika, the new one introduced last year.

"You definitely need to add some color to your kitchen," my editor, Liz Rogers, said earlier while we discussed her Fiesta® collection and my boring white plates in the Observer-Reporter newsroom in Washington, Pa.

I quickly change my mind in Newell after realizing it would cost nearly $60 just to purchase six large plates from the discount section of the store. However, I did leave with an $8 shamrock vase that would have sold for $29.99 in a department store, the clerk said.

Rogers apparently is among the Fiesta® junkies, many of whom fill up myriad Internet chat rooms gushing about their love of all things made at the sprawling Homer Laughlin plant.

Homer and his brother, Shakespeare, founded the company in 1871 using $5,000 in seed money East Liverpool City Council awarded them to build a white ware pottery factory. The city was out to compete with the more-sophisticated white China imported from England that had been growing in popularity on the U.S. market, the company's website explains.

The Laughlin company grew so fast that it expanded across the river about 1905, and also built the Newell suspension toll bridge, which is still in open to traffic. Fiesta® was introduced in 1936 by designer Frederick H. Rhead, an English immigrant potter who joined the company in 1927. However, "darkness covers the land ... no Fiesta® production for 12 years!!!" beginning in 1973, a company brochure states.

The years have shown their wear on the plant, as well as East Liverpool, where many downtown stores are vacant and few shoppers can be found on the sidewalks. Meanwhile, a long row of redbrick buildings beside the Homer Laughlin corporate offices appear rundown.

It was a disappointment to find the Museum of Ceramics' doors locked for the day by the time I stumbled upon it after its 3 p.m. closing time. It's located in an ornate former post office in East Liverpool. I likely will return there earlier in the day to visit that place, and also take a guided tour of the Fiesta® factory. Reservations are required at the plant.

Gonna rock for literacy

The Pittsburgh band Mon Gumbo performs at the 2011 Mardi Gras to Make a Difference fundraiser for Washington County Literacy Council, which tutors adults who want to learn how to read. The nonprofit has volunteers teaching English as a second language classes, and also provides free books to babies and children in its service area.

A Winkys survives in Beaver?

BEAVER, Pa. – We had driven several times into Beaver, Pa., past a gasoline station that half-resembles a fast-food restaurant that rivaled McDonald's in the 1960s and 1970s.

The next time we are here, I want to stop and take a photograph of the odd little business along State Street, I kept telling a friend, who chauffeurs us around this county seat north of Pittsburgh.

"It looks link a Winkys," I said last December, before we attended the crowded Christmas light-up festivities in this downtown, driving past the place yet another time.


Finally, we stop today, and I walk up to the attendant and ask, "Did this used to be a Winkys?"


"I don't know," answered the guy, who is too young to have remembered the kooky burger chain before looking at me oddly for snapping the above photo.


There used to be one of these restaurants in Charleroi, Pa., near our home in the Monongahela River Valley, and it became hugely popular because hamburgers sold there for 15 cents apiece. One of my uncles with six kids loved the place because he could feed his entire family there for under two bucks. The building since has been demolished.

Back at the house today, we search Google images for Winkys and, sure enough, this gas station fits the description. But, the chain's signature center roof peak is missing from this building.

This mystery is unsolved. 

Jim McKevitt, manager of the former Charleroi Winkys on Route 88, far left, is shown inside the restaurant chain that once rivaled McDonald's. (Doris Lancaster photo)