by don | Aug 15, 2010
The other morning I was in the wilds of the Cheoah Ranger District below the Cherohala Skyway sawing and dragging trees out of Forest Service roads so I could get to my bird points for this year’s survey. Rather than paying attention to where my digits and/or limbs...
by don | Aug 15, 2010
The giant oil slick (reported to be the size of Puerto Rico) sliding around in the Gulf of Mexico like bacon grease on a George Foreman grill tied to the back of an alligator is once again sliming its way toward a Louisiana landfall. Latest predictions from the...
by don | Aug 15, 2010
“You’re getting up when?” “You’re going out in this weather?” People who have a passion for the outdoors and revel in the beauty and the subtle and not so subtle intricacies of nature are accustomed to these questions and their accompanying incredulous stares. The...
by don | Aug 14, 2010
Lordy, lordy look who’s 40 – Earth Day and the EPA. Officially created and established in 1970, Earth Day was the spirit and philosophy that was going to take us to Nirvana; was going to create that idyllic symbiotic lifestyle of social and environmental justice where...
by don | Aug 14, 2010
Mom was a little concerned the other day as she helped Izzy find a butterfly net to catch white-headed “bumblebees.” Izzy was back in a couple of minutes with a roaring buzz emanating from her closed, cupped hands. She deposited her captured quarry into her butterfly...
by don | May 25, 2010
Early last week we were inundated with small gray moths. You couldn’t open a door without two or three coming inside. Moths inside are cool for Izzy, Maddy and the cat – all like to play with them. One evening, at dusk, Maddy took her bug cage and went out on the...
by don | May 13, 2010
Scientist-science Paige Barlow is a University of Georgia PhD candidate working out of the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in Otto, Nc. Barlow is researching the effects of land use on different species of birds in Macon County. It’s no secret that birds and bird...
by don | Mar 11, 2010
I opened the door around 7 a.m. last Saturday and spring hit me square in the face. Actually a cold misty breeze hit me square in the face but I got an earful of spring. “Drink your tea – ea-ea-ea-ea!” wailed an eastern towhee from the brambles at the edge of my yard....
by don | Feb 17, 2010
Enough already with the “Enough already!” I know it’s snowing again. Yep school is closed again. I’ve got an idea — call in well. To paraphrase Blowing Rock’s mountaintop yogi, Tom Robbins, from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, it would go like this. “Hi, I haven’t missed...
by don | Feb 10, 2010
The good Ben Morrison, compiler of the Wilmot, Ohio, Christmas Bird Count, contacted the Ohio Birds Records Committee and provided documentation for the purple martin I wrote about in the Jan. 20 Naturalist’s Corner. According to Gabe Leidy, compiler of the Ohio rare...
