by don | Feb 6, 2014
No better way to celebrate a big thaw than an impromptu field trip. We rounded up kids, friends and friends’ kids and headed for the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville. Our first stop at the Arboretum was the Baker Exhibit Center. Denise had checked online before...
by don | Jan 30, 2014
In my youth never did a B-western movie make it to the end without the bad guy being cornered and denounced for the “yellow-bellied sapsucker” he was. Yellow-belly and/or yellow-bellied has for various etymological reasons been associated with cowardice. Sapsucker, I...
by don | Jan 23, 2014
I mentioned the fact a couple of weeks ago (Jan. 1 – “Time to rejoin the “battle outside”) that NC House Bill 74 the Regulatory Reform Act of 2013 was set to begin the process of reviewing – readopting and/or repealing all state rules and that the first rules under...
by don | Jan 23, 2014
The annual Balsam Christmas Bird Count (CBC) took place Saturday Jan., 4. In the weeks prior to the count many regular Balsam CBC participants, like me, had been crying in our eggnog. Bob Olthoff, long time compiler for the count was calling Lake Junaluska a “liquid...
by don | Jan 23, 2014
This appears especially true in the Old Home State where the (first in over 100 years) Republican triad used the 2013 session of the General Assembly to lay waste to decades of progressive environmental policy and programs that produced a state that was a leader in...
by don | Dec 27, 2013
We touched on this winter’s irruption of snowy owls a couple of weeks ago but these birds continue to pop up, not only in the Carolinas but across the South and into the mid-section of the country. I recently heard of one sighting in northeastern Oklahoma and one in...
by don | Dec 18, 2013
I believe Lake Junaluska has spoiled local birders like me. I spent about an hour and a half poking around the lake and nearby areas last Sunday morning. I ran into a few other birders and we were all of the same opinion – the lake was dead, not much going on. But...
by don | Dec 12, 2013
This snowfall is measured in feathers or bodies not inches. This year is turning out to be a major irruption year for snowy owls in the eastern U.S. and at least four have been reported from the Carolinas. Snowys, Nyctea (or Bubo) scandiaca, nest in northernmost...
by don | Dec 5, 2013
Orion the Hunter has taken to the late autumn skies. One of the loveliest and easiest recognized constellations will be stalking the heavens till he slides into the daytime sky early next spring. Astronomers believe the Hunter, in his present form, is more than a...
by don | Nov 27, 2013
I believe it was in 2010 when the Town of Waynesville signed off on a plan to thin the stands of whit e pine in the Waynesville Watershed. Today (11/25) Cecil Brooks began doing just that. Brooks said that, weather permitting he would probably be hauling the first...
