by don | Apr 10, 2020
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...
by don | Feb 20, 2020
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...
by don | Jul 12, 2019
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...
by don | Jun 30, 2019
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...
by don | Mar 9, 2019
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...
by don | Feb 16, 2019
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...
