Warming the cockles

Warming the cockles

No one knows what Western North Carolina will look like post COVID-19, but these mountains have seen much over their millions of years – ice ages, civil war, pandemics, etc. and they are still here. Spring will come with its ephemerals and migrants; summer will flush...

Remember when hope was the thing with feathers?

Bobolinks are regular migrants through Western NC and their numbers have declined by more than 60 percent since 1966 – Don Hendershot photo Emily Dickinson wrote of that feathered hope in 1861: “Hope is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul...

Buteo jamaicensis

Soaring adult red-tail Don Hendershot photo A red-tail by any other name and there are several “named” red-tails. But I dare say for we sons and daughters of the South, simply the word hawk conjures up mental images of Buteo jamaicensis either scanning its...
Windy City peregrines

Windy City peregrines

My bride and I spent a few days in Chicago last week. She was there for a business seminar and I was there for moral support. But, alas, I also had work to do so after walking with her to the 737 Building on N. Michigan Ave. I returned to our room and began recording...

Week two – Cooper’s Hawk

Cooper’s hawks like all raptors exhibit sexual dimorphism — the male is on the left, female on right. USF&W photo I find it comforting that the Cooper’s is patrolling the skies over Waynesville — that there is something wild among us. I had to...
A Year From the Naturalist’s Corner: Vol. I

A Year From the Naturalist’s Corner: Vol. I

The Naturalist’s Corner has been in print since 1994 when I began the weekly outdoors column for Scott McLeod, then editor at Waynesville North Carolina’s Enterprise Mountaineer. When Scott left the Enterprise Mountaineer in 1999 to start his own regional weekly...