Twice threatened

In the land of the noonday sun, there lives a noonday snail. The noonday globe snail, Petera clarkia Nantahala is a medium-sized snail, about 3/4 inch wide and 1/2 inch high. This little slimeball is known only from about two miles of high calcareous cliffs in the...

The probably not so – Big Year

The 2011 movie “The Big Year” – a comedy starring Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson – didn’t ruffle a lot of feathers. According to Wikipedia, the movie with its $41 million budget only grossed $7.4 million. But the Cornell Lab of Ornithology reviewed the movie...

Welcome to the first day of winter

Your Cold Side Time to make tracks In winter’s first snow. Breathe in the first blast Of winter’s cold. Touch winter As winter touches you. It is your cold side. Your side Of short days and long nights.   And welcome to the shortest day and longest night of the...

Granddaddy of ‘em all

This year will mark the 117th annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC.) The CBC is the longest-lived and largest citizen-science project in the world. The count began in 1900. It was the brainchild of Frank Chapman one of the officers of the fledgling Audubon...

Creep on

It’s been about a month since my family and I enjoyed our assault on Whitetop. Okay, so in reality, it’s more like a jaunt from Whitetop. It’s still a 17-mile bike ride. Okay, okay, it’s a 17-mile bike cruise, downhill. The greatest exercise you will get will be in...

Welcome Home

The lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens, once ranged across North America from the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay drainages down the Mississippi to Louisiana and from the east coast to Wisconsin. But this prehistoric creature (sturgeons date back 135 million years) has...

You’re going the wrong way – not

When you’re out chasing fall migrants and you either have a good internal compass or you’re somewhere it’s pretty easy to orient yourself to the cardinal directions, like the Blue Ridge Parkway, it’s not unusual to find mixed flocks of migrants moving in what appears,...

Big and wild

Big and wild can’t be big and wild if your mind and heart are small. A “real” public meeting –as in announced and on the docket – took place in Asheville on September 20 as Buncombe County Commissioners listened to pros and cons regarding the proposed Craggies...

Must have been an omen

When I checked my email Friday morning (9/9) I had a message from Chris Kelly, mountain wildlife diversity biologist with North Carolina Natural Resources Commission. Kelly helps coordinate an annual nightjar (birds of the family Caprimulgidae like Chuck-will’s-widow...

Can’t see the forest for the webs

From what I gather from Facebook and overhear in the checkout line the view I encounter every morning on my daily trip from Balsam Gap to Tuscola High School is pretty much standard across Western North Carolina and, according to a Google search across much of the...