A sparrowing we will go

For a bunch of “little ole ladies in tennis shoes,” birders are a hardy lot. Gone is the green of spring and summer, and with it go the scarlet of tanagers, the indigo of buntings, the blue of grosbeaks and the rainbow of multicolored warblers. With us are the browns and grays of winter and the sparrows.

No compromise

When I was a full-time staff writer at the Smoky Mountain News, I spent a lot of time covering the North Shore Road controversy.

Bush continues to “Dance with the one that brung ‘ya”

“Dance with the one that brung ‘ya” is an old Texas mantra, and Texas oilman George W. Bush has filled the Beltway with dancing partners over the last six years.

The Texas two-step continues.

Ray or the worm – the worm or Ray?

Once again,science and scientists go head to head with the forces of nature to see who can best predict the coming winter in the North Carolina mountains.

How ‘bout them toad suckers? Ain’t they clods?

When my wife came home the other evening, she asked if I had heard about the toad-sucking dog on NPR.

Winter means waterfowl at Lake Junaluska

Anyone who follows the Naturalist’s Corner knows that I have devoted much ink to the birds one might encounter at Lake Junaluska and its environs since I began the column back in 1996.

Tisn’t the season, but...

A couple of Sundays ago Bob Olthoff, Blair Ogburn (senior naturalist at Balsam Mountain Preserve) and I were at Balsam Mountain searching through a mixed flock of migrants, looking for any newcomers when we heard someone kickstart a motorcycle in the woods behind us.

Ivory-billed hiatus

Ornithologists Geoff Hill of Auburn University and Dan Mennill from University of Windsor presented a program at this year’s American Ornithological Union’s meeting in Veracruz, Mexico on Oct. 4, regarding their claims of the presence of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Florida.

Falling for autumn

The furnace has been on a couple of nights already to take the chill off. Driving home from Asheville the other evening in the wind-blown rain, I got a good look at the first real cold front of the year. Great dark clouds, purple looking in the twilight, were rising like a wall in the west, but it was a wall with tattered holes, through which shone patches of powder-blue, backlit sky. Friday morning came clear and blue and bright and crisp with a yard full of migrating songbirds. Autumn is, indeed, here.

Ivory-billed redux?

Here we go again

Grail bird’s back in town again

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