Serendipitous hawk watch
The rains came Saturday. It was a good day for a soaker, from my perspective. I had writing I needed to catch up on and it’s not as hard being stuck away down in the dungeon when it’s pouring. We had seen the forecast for Sunday and I remember remarking to Denise, on...
Fall out for the fallout
Thanks to an invitation from a friend – Blair Ogburn, senior naturalist at Balsam Mountain Trust, I was able to spend a few hours last Saturday (9/12) morning looking for fall migrants at Balsam Mountain Preserve. Great friends, great birding, add a twist of...
Get thee to an eatery
Sorry, I couldn’t help it – I saw Hamlet at Montford Park this past weekend. But to be more specific, get thee to City Lights Café this Friday, September 13 at 6:00 p .m. for “Land of the Crooked Water.” Land of the Crooked Water is the inaugural offering of the...
Owning the autumn sky
The loud, piercing keee-eeeeerrrr jerks your head up involuntarily to see the essence of wild freedom – a red-tailed hawk, wings outstretched banking slowly in the blue. It stops you, if only for a second or two, it stops you. If you are close enough to get a...
A bird with two tales
Roger Tory Petersen called it, “one of the most breathtaking of the world’s weirdest birds,” and it was John James Audubon’s “rose-coloured curlew.” But the name that has s tuck is roseate spoonbill. The roseate spoonbill is one of only six species of spoonbills in...
No this ain’t Dallas
Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Dallas. And I’m sure that if you like big, hot, crowded cities the big “D” has lots to offer. But when I met my guest, from Dallas, on the Blue Ridge Parkway last Friday morning, with the temperature in the 60s, she...
Don Hendershot
The Naturalist's Corner