Warming the cockles

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...

Remember when hope was the thing with feathers?

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 - And sings...

Buteo jamaicensis

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...

Windy City peregrines

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...

Winter Miracle

It’s late January and it’s 15 degrees outside, snow is flying, the Alberta Clipper has the huge yellow buckeye swaying like the mast of a sailing ship but inside that yellow buckeye, a good 50 feet above ground in a cramped clawed out leaf-lined den, life will not be...

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Happy New Ivory-Billed Search in 2009

May old woodpeckers be forgot and never photoshopped. A $50,000 reward has been offered for a definitive photo of an ivory-billed woodpecker. I’m thinking that photo might be worth a buck or two more. Should old woodpeckers be forgot and left to auld lang syne? For...

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In the Midnight Hour

Like ships that collide in the middle of the night, “midnight rules” and their undoing perpetuate and reinforce philosophical and ideological divisions in this country while enhancing partisanship and strengthening the hold and influence politicians and power brokers...

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Headlines on the front page of the Wall Street Bible, I mean Journal, Dec. 27 proclaimed: “Feeding Wild Birds May Harm Them And Environment, It Lures Pests, Causes Illness: Changing the Relationship Between Man and Nature – A booming Business in Seeds,” by James P....

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I couldn’t think of anywhere I would rather be. Stars blazed above me seemingly close enough to jump up and touch. A thin wispy cloud behind me was pelting me with fine, hard snow pellets. The wind had cranked up and was steady between 15 and 20 m.p.h. I knew my...

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