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Canoe Creek State Park
Canoe Creek State Park is a Pennsylvania state park in Frankstown Township in Blair County, Pennsylvania. It is 12 miles east of Altoona, the nearest city. Canoe Lake, at , is the focus of recreation at the park and is open for fishing year-round. Canoe Creek State Park is a half mile off U.S. Route 22 near the small town of Canoe Creek. The park was opened to the public in 1979 and was developed as part of an expansion effort in the 1970s to improve the state park system in Pennsylvania. Canoe Creek State Park was chosen by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and its Bureau of Parks as one of "Twenty Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks". ''Note: Despite the title, there are twenty-one parks in the list, with Colton Point and Leonard Harrison State Parks treated as one.'' Industrial history The area in and surrounding Canoe Creek State Park is rich in limestone. The limestone was quarried and used for many purposes like providing needed ...
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Frankstown Township, Blair County, Pennsylvania
Frankstown Township is a township in Blair County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of the Altoona Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,399 at the 2020 census. The township was named after Stephen Franks, a pioneer citizen. Geography Frankstown Township occupies the center of Blair County. It is bordered by the borough of Hollidaysburg and Allegheny Township to the west, Logan Township and Tyrone Township to the northwest, Catharine Township to the northeast, Woodbury Township to the east, Huston Township to the southeast, and Taylor Township and Blair Township to the southwest. Unincorporated communities in the township include (from northeast to southwest) Moores Mill, Canoe Creek, Reese, Linds Crossing, Geeseytown, Frankstown, and Sylvan Hills, as well as the east half of Loop. The township is located in the heart of the Ridge and Valley Province of the Appalachian Mountains, and a large portion of the township's borders follow ridgecrest ...
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Steel
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant typically need an additional 11% chromium. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, steel is used in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, trains, cars, machines, electrical appliances, weapons, and rockets. Iron is the base metal of steel. Depending on the temperature, it can take two crystalline forms (allotropic forms): body-centred cubic and face-centred cubic. The interaction of the allotropes of iron with the alloying elements, primarily carbon, gives steel and cast iron their range of unique properties. In pure iron, the crystal structure has relatively little resistance to the iron atoms slipping past one another, and so pure iron is quite ductile, or soft and easily formed. In steel, small amounts of ...
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Brown Thrasher
The brown thrasher (''Toxostoma rufum''), sometimes erroneously called the brown thrush or fox-coloured thrush, is a bird in the family Mimidae, which also includes the New World catbirds and mockingbirds. The brown thrasher is abundant throughout the eastern and central United States and southern and central Canada, and it is the only thrasher to live primarily east of the Rockies and central Texas. It is the state bird of Georgia. As a member of the genus '' Toxostoma'', the bird is relatively large-sized among the other thrashers. It has brown upper parts with a white under part with dark streaks. Because of this, it is often confused with the smaller wood thrush (''Hylocichla mustelina''), among other species. The brown thrasher is noted for having over 1000 song types, and the largest song repertoire of birds. However, each note is usually repeated in two or three phrases. The brown thrasher is an omnivore, with its diet ranging from insects to fruits and nuts. The usual ...
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Red-winged Blackbird
The red-winged blackbird (''Agelaius phoeniceus'') is a passerine bird of the family Icteridae found in most of North America and much of Central America. It breeds from Alaska and Newfoundland south to Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico, and Guatemala, with isolated populations in western El Salvador, northwestern Honduras, and northwestern Costa Rica. It may winter as far north as Pennsylvania and British Columbia, but northern populations are generally migratory, moving south to Mexico and the southern United States. Claims have been made that it is the most abundant living land bird in North America, as bird-counting censuses of wintering red-winged blackbirds sometimes show that loose flocks can number in excess of a million birds per flock and the full number of breeding pairs across North and Central America may exceed 250 million in peak years. It also ranks among the best-studied wild bird species in the world. The red-winged blackbird is sexually dimorphic; the male is ...
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New World Oriole
New World orioles are a group of birds in the genus ''Icterus'' of the blackbird family. Unrelated to Old World orioles of the family Oriolidae, they are strikingly similar in size, diet, behavior, and strongly contrasting plumage. As a result, the two have been given the same vernacular name. Males are typically black and vibrant yellow or orange with white markings, females and immature birds duller. They molt annually. New World orioles are generally slender with long tails and a pointed bill. They mainly eat insects, but also enjoy nectar and fruit. The nest is a woven, elongated pouch. Species nesting in areas with cold winters are strongly migratory, while subtropical and tropical species are more sedentary. The name "oriole" was first recorded (in the Latin form ''oriolus'') by the German Dominican friar Albertus Magnus in about 1250, which he stated to be onomatopoeic, from the song of the European golden oriole. One of the species in the genus, Bahama oriole, i ...
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Bluebird
The bluebirds are a North American group of medium-sized, mostly insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the order of Passerines in the genus ''Sialia'' of the thrush family (Turdidae). Bluebirds are one of the few thrush genera in the Americas. Bluebirds have blue, or blue and rose beige, plumage. Female birds are less brightly colored than males, although color patterns are similar and there is no noticeable difference in size. Taxonomy and species The genus ''Sialia'' was introduced by the English naturalist William John Swainson in 1827 with the eastern bluebird (''Sialia sialis'') as the type species. A molecular phylogenetic study using mitochondrial sequences published in 2005 found that ''Sialia'', '' Myadestes'' (solitaires) and '' Neocossyphus'' (African ant-thrushes) formed a basal clade in the family Turdidae. Within ''Sialia'' the mountain bluebird was sister to the eastern bluebird. The genus contains three species: Behavior Bluebirds are territorial and pr ...
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Osprey
The osprey (''Pandion haliaetus''), , also called sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor reaching more than in length and across the wings. It is brown on the upperparts and predominantly greyish on the head and underparts. The osprey tolerates a wide variety of habitats, nesting in any location near a body of water providing an adequate food supply. It is found on all continents except Antarctica, although in South America it occurs only as a non-breeding migrant. As its other common names suggest, the osprey's diet consists almost exclusively of fish. It possesses specialised physical characteristics and exhibits unique behaviour to assist in hunting and catching prey. As a result of these unique characteristics, it has been given its own taxonomic genus, ''Pandion'', and family, Pandionidae. Taxonomy The osprey was described by Carl Linnaeus under the name ''Falco haliaeetus'' i ...
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Bald Eagle
The bald eagle (''Haliaeetus leucocephalus'') is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (''Haliaeetus albicilla''), which occupies the same niche as the bald eagle in the Palearctic. Its range includes most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States, and northern Mexico. It is found near large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply and old-growth trees for nesting. The bald eagle is an opportunistic feeder which subsists mainly on fish, which it swoops down upon and snatches from the water with its talons. It builds the largest nest of any North American bird and the largest tree nests ever recorded for any animal species, up to deep, wide, and in weight. Sexual maturity is attained at the age of four to five years. Bald eagles are not actually bald; the name derives from an older meaning of the word, "white headed". The adult is mainly brown with a w ...
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Waterfowl
Anseriformes is an order of birds also known as waterfowl that comprises about 180 living species of birds in three families: Anhimidae (three species of screamers), Anseranatidae (the magpie goose), and Anatidae, the largest family, which includes over 170 species of waterfowl, among them the ducks, geese, and swans. Most modern species in the order are highly adapted for an aquatic existence at the water surface. With the exception of screamers, males have penises, a trait that has been lost in the Neoaves. Due to their aquatic nature, most species are web-footed. Evolution Anseriformes are one of only two types of modern bird to be confirmed present during the Mesozoic alongside the other dinosaurs, and in fact were among the very few birds to survive their extinction, along with their cousins the galliformes. These two groups only occupied two ecological niches during the Mesozoic, living in water and on the ground, while the toothed enantiornithes were the domina ...
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Indiana Bat
The Indiana bat (''Myotis sodalis'') is a medium-sized mouse-eared bat native to North America. It lives primarily in Southern and Midwestern U.S. states and is listed as an endangered species. The Indiana bat is grey, black, or chestnut in color and is 1.2–2.0 in long and weighs 4.5–9.5 g (0.16–0.34 oz). It is similar in appearance to the more common little brown bat, but is distinguished by its feet size, toe hair length, pink lips, and a keel on the calcar. Indiana bats live in hardwood and hardwood-pine forests. It is common in old-growth forest and in agricultural land, mainly in forest, crop fields, and grasslands. As an insectivore, the bat eats both terrestrial and aquatic flying insects, such as moths, beetles, mosquitoes, and midges. The Indiana bat is listed as an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It has had serious population decline, estimated to be more than 50% over the past 10 years, based on direct observation and a decl ...
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Hibernaculum (zoology)
A hibernaculum ''plural form: hibernacula'' (Latin, "tent for winter quarters") is a place in which a creature seeks Refuge (ecology), refuge, such as a bear using a cave to overwinter. The word can be used to describe a variety of shelters used by many kinds of animals, including insects, toads, lizards, snakes, bats, rodents, and primates of various species. Insects Insects range in their size, structure, and general appearance but most use hibernacula. All insects are primarily exothermic. For this reason, extremely cold temperatures, such as those experienced in the winter, outside of tropical locations, cause their metabolic systems to shut down; long exposure may lead to death. Insects survive colder winters through the process of overwintering, which occurs at all stages of development and may include Insect migration, migration or hibernation for different insects, the latter of which must be done in hibernacula. Insects that do not migrate must halt their growth to avo ...
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Little Brown Bat
The little brown bat or little brown myotis (''Myotis lucifugus'') is an endangered species of mouse-eared microbat found in North America. It has a small body size and glossy brown fur. It is similar in appearance to several other mouse-eared bats, including the Indiana bat, northern long-eared bat, and Arizona myotis, to which it is closely related. Despite its name, the little brown bat is not closely related to the big brown bat, which belongs to a different genus. Its mating system is polygynandrous, or promiscuous, and females give birth to one offspring annually. The offspring, called pups, are quickly weaned and reach adult size in some dimensions by three weeks old. The little brown bat has a mean lifespan of 6.5 years, though one individual in the wild reached 34 years old. It is nocturnal, foraging for its insect prey at night and roosting in hollow trees or buildings during the day, among less common roost types. It navigates and locates prey with echolocatio ...
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