Panther Top fire tower
My family spent a wonderful sunny Sunday afternoon, this week, in the Tusquitee Ranger District of the Nantahala National Forest just west of Murphy. Our first stop was the Panther Top Lookout tower on Forest Service Road 85. The 30-foot high former live-in tower was...
The Good, The Bad and The Deadly
The Good, The Bad and The Deadly is one of five classes that will be offered by the Asheville Mushroom Club (AMC) during its annual FungiFest, which will be held September 18 at the North Carolina Arboretum. The daylong event will include displays, classes and...
Fall migration is heating up
It looks like last week’s long-billed curlew was a harbinger of things to come. A quick perusal of the Carolinas Birding List at http://www.birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CARO.html#1283714291 showed fall migrants popping up all across the Carolinas. I guess as far as...
WNC birders jolted from summer doldrums
Birders are a restless, impatient lot. From the end of June till the end of August they walk around in a kind of stupor. You will see them occasionally stop shuffling, cock their head with hand cupped behind their ear – then mutter “wren” and shuffle on, or suddenly,...
Won one for the piper
On August 17 federal judge Royce C. Lambeth ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s designation of critical habitat for the federally threatened piping plover in areas of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore were in compliance with the Endangered Species Act....
The oil is gone! Long live the oil!
A week or so ago White House energy adviser Carol Browner was hitting the morning TV circuit, telling anyone who would listen that the majority of the more than 200 million gallons of crude that gushered into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s Deepwater Horizon blow out on...