The curious lifestyles and distinctive habits one can observe in the bird world are continually fascinating.

Some things you can count on to occur with regularity. Each year, in late spring or early summer, blue jays will gather into communal flocks that scour the woodlands seeking and devouring bird eggs and young birds. They go about this grim task systematically, decimating a chosen watershed one day before moving over to the adjacent one the following day.

For years I’ve tried to discourage these ravaging hordes when they pillage lower Lands Creek in Swain County, where we live. I’ve even resorted to firing shotgun blast after shotgun blast in their general direction, not actually aiming at them. But they simply squawk, move a bit out of range, and continue what seems to be their appointed task. Indeed, I wonder, is this ravaging a necessary part of natural order, a way of “thinning the herd,” so to speak? If so, I still don’t like it a bit.

Each fall one can count on pairs of pileated woodpeckers to go through a mock mating ritual. The male flies about the woodlands hammering and calling to the female, who responds in kind. On one level, they’re probably just re-establishing territorial boundary lines for the coming breeding season. But the rituals seemingly go beyond this. Since pileated woodpeckers mate for life, it’s also likely that the males and females are renewing their relationship for the coming year — sort of like making your wedding vows on an annual basis. Such pair bonding is not at all uncommon in the natural world.

One of the most unusual instances of bird behavior that I’ve observed was seeing a brown thrasher deliberately alight on an anthill and proceed to rub ant after ant all over the underside of its body. I was jogging along a sandy stretch of road when I saw the thrasher alight on the anthill; he was still there when I jogged away 10 minutes later.

I subsequently learned that ornithologists refer to this ritual as anting. They’re not quite sure just what the songbirds that utilize it are up to. The entry on “anting” in The Birder’s Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds (1988) notes that “the most reasonable assumption seems to be that it is a way of acquiring defensive secretions of ants, primarily for their insecticidal, miticidal, fungicidal, or bactericidal properties and perhaps secondarily, as a supplement to the bird’s own preen oil.”

That seems to be a fancy way of saying that ants help birds ward off insects and body diseases. It’s probable that the formic acid emitted by the disturbed ants helps free the bird of feather and skin parasites.

In addition to grabbing the ants with their bills and applying the insects directly to their bodies, birds will sometimes simply nestle down into an anthill and allow the critters to crawl over them freely. If a bird can stand it, this is no doubt the most effective way of tidying up. Just writing about it makes my skin crawl.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Many people who spend some time walking the woodland stream banks and other wet areas here in the Smokies region have had the memorable experience of flushing a woodcock — that secretive, rotund, popeyed, little bird with an exceedingly long down-pointing bill which explodes from underfoot and zigzags away on whistling wings while just barely managing bat-like to dodge tree limbs and trunks.

Even if you see the woodcock land and think you’ve marked the exact spot, you’ll have a difficult time relocating it on the forest floor. The bird’s brown, barred, and cross-hatched plumage simulates dead leaf litter to perfection.

My wife, Elizabeth, and I used to jump woodcocks on a fairly frequent basis — especially this time of the year — along a trail that no longer exists due to development on neighboring property. The trail led through a rocky wooded area just across the footbridge leading to our house. In the soft mud along the creek, it was easy to locate “poke holes” — the numerous round openings woodcocks leave wherever they’ve been searching for earthworms.

Their foraging technique and bill are interesting items. In order to locate worms, woodcocks sometimes perform a “foot stomping” routine that causes the prey to move underground. These birds have keen hearing, with ear openings located below and ahead of the eyes that are ideally situated for “earthworming.”

Once movement is detected, the woodcock plunges its bill into the mud. A normal bird would at this point have difficulty opening its bill so as to grasp and ingest. But there’s no such problem for the woodcock, which can open the flexible tip-end of its prehensile bill and suck the critters right in.

“Because of its mud-probing foraging technique, the woodcock’s rather large eyes are set high and back on its head,” writes Jim Clark in an article entitled “The Tumbling Timberdoodle” that appeared in “Birder’s World” magazine. “This placement not only helps keep mud and debris out of the eyes, but also provides an additional advantage in protection.

“Its field of vision completely encircles it, enabling the bird to see directly behind itself, much to the dismay of a predator or researcher trying to capture and band it.”

Even more fascinating than the woodcock’s foraging technique and defensive eye-placement are the “nuptial” rituals involving a “falling-leaf” aerial descent performed over established “singing grounds.”

“If the winter has been mild, these vocal and non-vocal sounds (the bird produces a twittering sound with its wing primaries as it spirals downward) may be heard as early as the first week of January and will continue into April,” notes ornithologist Fred Alsop in Birds of the Smokies (1991). “The best places to look are overgrown fields, wet seepage areas, and woodland edges where the bird quietly spends the day and where its staple food of earthworms can be found. Locate your ‘spot’ during the day and return at just about sunset. Most of the singing and display begins about a half hour after sundown, especially on those nights when the temperature is mild and there is little wind ... The ‘peent’ note given on the ground may remind you of the call of a frog or the common nighthawk. Good places to listen are sites below 2,000 feet with the habitats listed above, including [in the national park] the Sugarlands Visitor Center, Oconaluftee, and Cades Cove.”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Some folks can’t stand house sparrows (a native of north Africa and Eurasia) while others detest starlings (a native of Europe). Both species were introduced into this country in the 19th century. While I don’t especially admire house sparrows and starlings, my favorite bird to despise is the brown-headed cowbird, a native of North America.

The brown-headed cowbird is the black sheep of the blackbird family, which numbers among its kind such upright and attractive denizens of the bird world as bobolinks, meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, and Baltimore orioles. Unlike most blackbirds, which have long sharp-pointed bills, the cowbird displays a short sparrow-like bill.The male’s lower body has the shiny-black coloration of, say, a grackle, but its head is glossy-brown. The female is a plain gray-brown above, paler below.

I often hear cowbirds before seeing them. They “sing” a squeaky, not entirely unpleasant, “glug-glug-glee” gurgling song and emit a call that is a sort of rattling “check.” Look up and you’ll spot them perched on an extended branch or wire. They seem to teeter back and forth on their perches like drunken high wire artists. But, alas, they never fall.

Here comes the bad part. Along with its cousins the shiny cowbirds, a South American species that appears in the Deep South, and the western bronzed cowbirds, the brown-headed cowbird is the only North American songbird that regularly practices “brood parasitism,” which is a fancy way of saying that it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds and leaves the rearing of its young up to them. Yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos will rarely lay an egg in another species’ nest.

According to Fred Alsop’s Birds of the Smokies (1991), the cowbird’s “scientific name (Molothus ater) can be translated to ‘black parasite,’ [as] the female selects the active nest of another species ... and lays her eggs there, often removing an egg of the host for each one she lays .... Fledgling cowbirds seem to be perpetually famished and my attention has often been drawn to the sight of a scurrying vireo or song sparrow feverishly trying to collect and transport insect after insect to the gaping mouth of its constantly calling ‘baby’ cowbird. The foster child is often considerably larger than the attendant ‘parent.’”

The brown-headed cowbird will lay their eggs in the nests of over 75 other species, mostly those smaller than themselves. Each female deposits up to 25 or more eggs per nesting season. The energy toll this takes on the hosts, which can’t seem to resist the urge to raise the ravenous baby cowbirds, is enormous.

It’s estimated that well over a million cowbird eggs are laid every year. Not a single one is laid in a nest built by a cowbird. Not a single one is hatched by a cowbird. And not a single cowbird baby is fed and raised by a cowbird. Female cowbirds do hang around the nest sites and lead their young away once the energy-intensive work of rearing them to flying size has been accomplished.

At “The Birds of America Online” (a site sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Ornithologist’s Union) it is noted that: “Impact on host species depends on how distribution and abundance patterns of host and cowbird match. The red-winged blackbird, likely North America’s most common species, is an important cowbird host though sheer numbers, even though the percentage of nests parasitized is low. At the other extreme, Kirtland’s warblers produce few cowbirds, although its own existence is actually threatened by brood parasitism because such a high percentage of its nests are parasitized.”

In our region wood thrush, yellow warbler, red-eyed and yellow-throated vireo, ovenbird, American redstart, phoebe, and indigo bunting nest sites are favorite targets of female cowbirds.

How did cowbird brood parasitism evolve? Some ornithologists conjecture that the bird once followed roving bands of bison to feed (then being known as “buffalo birds”) so that they had little or no time to nest in one spot. It therefore became expedient to simply lay their eggs along the way in the nests of other birds. With the demise of the bison herds, the cowbird shifted its attention to cows, thereby spreading east from the great prairies into farming areas. If you visit a dairy operation or other place where there are cows, you’ll find cowbirds. But they’re not all that particular these days — you’ll also find them in low-elevation towns and open woodlands throughout the Smokies region.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Joe Wright was born and raised in the high Nantahalas in the northwest corner of Macon County. He was 90-some-years-old when I interviewed him back in the early 1990s or thereabouts and made the notes upon which this account, in part, is based.

Wright took a job with the Nantahala Power and Light Co. (now a subsidiary of Duke Power Company) and did survey and other work for the company “off and on” for 40 years. He remembered when the massive Nantahala Dam — 250-feet high, 1,042-feet long, impounding a 1,605-acre lake — was built in the early 1940s. It was a project that pioneered the rock-fill method of using earth and rock instead of all-concrete to build large dams.

Wright also vividly recalled construction in the Nantahalas that resulted in hydroelectric impoundments so small that they’re called “vest pocket” dams.

Two of these are situated in the Aquone area on Dick’s and Whiteoak creeks, emptying their waters via connector pipes into the main Nantahala Dam pipe that leads above and below ground almost 30,000-feet down to the Beechertown substation at the head of the lower Nantahala Gorge (near the present day raft put-in areas). A few miles to the east at the head of the Winding Stairs road there’s the Queen’s Creek dam, which has its own pipe leading directly down to the Beachertown substation.

These three facilities are small impoundments; indeed, the ones at Whiteoak and Dick’s creeks are duck-pond size, having dams that are about 75-feet wide that back up water not more than 150 or so feet. But there’s yet another facility on the Diamond Valley drainage above Dick’s Creek that can be classified as tiny. Locals who worked at the dam construction sites refer to these lilliputian constructions as “watch fob” or “virgin” dams.

At 12-feet across, 6-feet high, and pooling up just enough water to take a shallow bath in, the Diamond Valley dam, built in 1948, was supposed by Nantahala officials back in the early 1990s to be the world’s smallest hydroelectric dam used for commercial purposes.

Located at 2,935-feet elevation, it’s the highest of the dams in the Nantahala system. An 18-inch pipe from the little dam runs down about 100 yards to the Dick’s Creek impoundment, which it empties into with a sparkling gush through a concrete conduit, adding its bit to the generating capacity of the entire system.

Nantahala officials were — and probably still are — fond of the Diamond Valley midget. “If a dam can be cute, this one is,” said Fred Alexander, the company’s manager of corporate communications at that time

And neither did they scoff at its capabilities. Each year, according to Alexander, water siphoned from the Diamond Valley watershed added “approximately 1,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to supply power for 111 homes based on 9,000 kilowatt hours per home per year.” Maintenance was minimal, involving little more than periodic leaf removal from the outflow screen and the cutting back of brush, for a system that contributed about $50,000 worth of water annually.

“The Dick’s Creek dam was built by men working around the clock in shifts,” recalled Wright. “Dump trucks brought in rock and we laid it out in three tiered sections of 50-feet each.”

The flat location chosen for that dam and pond placed it about 100 yards above the mouth of Diamond Valley Creek. Therefore, as Wright recalled, in order to collect Diamond Valley’s output, the connecting pipe had to be run underground at an angle back up Dick’s Creek’s under Junaluaka Road. It was a cunning bit of micro-engineering.

When the observation was put to him that, “You dam-builders seemed determined to gather just about every last drop of available water,” Joe Wright rocked forward in his chair, eyes glittering with mirth, and nodded assent.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The recent warm spell has the birds singing and various plants budding. One of these is forsythia. My wife, Elizabeth, recently placed several clippings in a vase in our home, near a window, where the light and warmth will force them into early bloom. But they’ll soon be flowering in gardens and in the wild, where they have become naturalized. They are one of the few flowering plants that flourish in March, brightening dooryards, woodland edges, and stream margins with their delicate spires of yellow flowers.

A member of the Olive Family, forsythia belongs to a genus containing seven distinct species, all of which are native to eastern Asia, except for one that’s found in eastern Europe. Three of the Asian species are the ones introduced as ornamentals into Europe and this country beginning in the early 19th century. They are known by their generic name (Forsythia) and by common names like golden bells, yellow bells, and “yaller” bells.

The scientific name honors William Forsyth (1837-1804), a founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society of London. It was Forsyth, by the way, who encouraged the botanical studies of John Fraser, the Scottish botanist who explored the Southern Appalachians during the late 18th century, discovering Fraser fir, Fraser sedge, and other notable plants.

Numerous variegated, dwarf, and many-flowered horticultural varieties of forsythia were developed in the 20th century; however, three of the Asian species ae the ones you’re likely to encounter around old homesteads here in the Smokies region. If you’ve been wondering, as I have, about the kind of old-time forsythias growing on your property, it’s possible to make a reasonable determination based on various growth characteristics.

Weeping forsythia (Forsythia suspensa) was introduced into cultivation in 1833 by Philipp Siebold (1791-1866), a German physician who worked for the Dutch East India Company in Japan from 1826-1830. He later established a nursery at Leiden, where he also introduced Japanese azaleas, bamboos, camellias, hydrangeas, and lilies. Weeping forsythia grows eight feet or more high, with slender branches often bending to the ground and rooting at its tips. The flowers are bright yellow. The toothed leaves are often deeply lobed or divided into three parts. The twigs are hollow except where leaves occur.

Greenstem forsythia (Forsythia viridissima) was introduced into cultivation in 1844 by William Fortune (1813-1880), a Scottish plant collector sent to China in 1843 by the Royal Horticultural Society. In those days, the trip from China to England around the Cape of Good Hope took up to five months in salt-spray conditions that killed most exposed plants. Fortune shipped his plants home in Wardian cases, glass boxes sealed together so that no moisture escaped, with sufficient soil in the bottom of the container so that root cuttings or small plants could be grown.

In this manner, he was able to introduce such plants as Chinese anemone, golden larch, Oriental bleeding heart, Chinese fringe tree, lacebark pine, double-file viburnum, white-flowered wisteria, old-fashioned weigela, and forsythia. Greenstem forsythia has erect, bright green branches, reaching up to 10 feet high. The flowers are greenish-yellow. Most of the lance-shaped leaves are toothed, although a few may be smooth-edged. This is the only forsythia species graced with autumn leaf color, a lovely purplish red. The pith inside the twigs is partitioned.

Korean forsythia (Forsythia ovata) was introduced into cultivation in 1919 by E.H. “Chinese” Wilson (1876-1930), an English plant collector sent to Asia on four separate occasions by the Arnold Arboretum in Cambridge, Mass. Wilson was responsible for introducing hundreds of plant species into cultivation, including regal lilies. He located a new species of forsythia in the remote Diamond Mountains of Korea. This species has proved to be the hardiest of all the forsythias, one that does well in northern New England and would prosper in the higher elevations here in the Southern Appalachians. The bright yellow flowers are smaller and not as prominent as those of the species described above. The ovate leaves clearly distinguish it from any other forsythia.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Of late, I have been hearing the owls sounding off on the slopes and ridge lines behind our home. Some folks think of owls as evil omens, but I like to listen to them. They are, for me, the nocturnal call of the wild.

Learning to identify the owls that reside here in the Smokies region by sight or sound isn’t difficult. There are but five species one can reasonably anticipate encountering: barn, saw-whet, screech, great horned, and barred. Two others — the snowy and the long-eared have been reported from the mountains — but they are highly irregular winter visitors.

The barn owl, a white bird with a heart-shaped face that lends it a monkey-like appearance, is only occasionally encountered here. If you live on a large open farm with outbuildings that seem to be haunted by ghostly creatures emitting screams and chuckles, you probably have barn owls.

To see or hear the little eight-inch high saw-whet owl during the breeding season, you have to visit the spruce-fir country along the Blue Ridge Parkway or along the Clingmans Dome spur from Newfound Gap in the Smokies (especially at Indian Gap and the parking area of the Spruce-Fir Nature Trail), where they reach the southernmost extension of their range from the great Canadian zone forest. They can occasionally be observed in the lower elevations during the winter months.

In Birds of the Smokies (1991), East Tennessee State University ornithologist Fred Alsop noted: “The first report of this small northern owl’s occurrence in the park was made in 1941. Its presence has lured and excited many birders since .... The owl is named for the quality of its monotonous whistled song which, to the ornithologist who named it, sounded like someone sharpening (whetting) a saw.” The first nesting sites for this owl in the southern mountains were located for the first time in recent decades.

More common than the barn or saw-whet owls are the screech, great horned, and barred owls. In December when they are mating, I hear great horned owls hooting on the high ridges along the so-called “Road to Nowhere” that leads into the national park north of Bryson City. These great birds are the equivalent of a wildcat in regard to hunting prowess. They often live and feed in suburban or urban areas, where rodents are plentiful. If you have a cat that’s missing, think great horned owl.

Screech owls are not aptly named, their call actually being a quavering, descending whinny. A better name would be “whinnying owl.” Alsop noted that: “They may be reddish, brown, or gray in their plumage and in the park the reddish phase outnumbers the gray by approximately four to one; brown plumaged birds are extremely rare.”

Learn to imitate their whistling call and they’ll answer you right back, especially from July into October. A mediocre imitator of owls, I have nevertheless lured them to within 15 or so yards or so of our back porch, probably hoping to see who the fool was making such a racket.

My favorite owl is the barred, which Alsop noted is “probably the the most frequently encountered owl in the Smokies.” If you spot a fair-sized owl, lacking “horns,” with a barred upper breast, it’s most likely a barred owl.

I sometimes hear them during daylight hours when walking backcountry trails, especially near gaps at about 3,500 to 4,000 feet. My notion (scientifically unverified) is that many bird species frequent gap areas so as to easily pass back and forth from one watershed or the other for sunlight or food.

I don’t ever recall walking up from Coopers Creek in the national park above Ela to Deeplow Gap on Thomas Divide Ridge without hearing a barred owl in the gap area. Up north, they are thought to say, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?” While down south they seem to say, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” A native mountaineer might hear one calling out, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-uns?” Same bird — differing regional dialects — depending on the ears of the beholder.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Some birds — blue jays, cardinals, mockingbirds, song sparrows, etc. — are so much a part of our everyday lives that they have virtually become invisible. We see them without truly paying attention to their comings and goings, to their particular characteristics.

Of these, the American robin is perhaps the most characteristic. Our elementary school primers inevitably contained illustrations of robust robins pulling long worms out of holes. These days, robins populate television screens on Saturday mornings as they hop about in cartoon features, representing — as it were — the idea of a “bird.” We know what a robin looks like in outline and we know how to spell “r-o-b-i-n” — but do we know anything much about the living entities that are robins?

In my case the answer, until recently, was “No.” Large flocks of robins gathering in recent weeks in the cove where we live adjacent to the national park gave me pause to think about them and do a little research and direct observation.

From the mid-Atlantic states westward to Arkansas and southward through southeastern forests and sometimes cities, large wintering roosts may be established, but then the birds shift their concentrations with cold fronts or after nearby food resources are depleted.

The common name is short for “Robin redbreast.” The origin of the second part of that name is obvious, but in reality a mature female’s breast feathers are often more orange than red. Robin is, of course, the diminutive of Robert, being used as either a masculine or feminine given name. The name was initially applied to the English robin (a warbler with a red breast) and transferred by the early settlers to America’s red-breasted bird.

When I started observing birds closely some years ago, I was interested to learn that the robin is a member of the thrush family; that is, it’s a cousin of the two other common thrushes that frequent Western North Carolina: the wood thrush and the bluebird.

Another family member, the hermit thrush, visits all parts of the Smokies region during the winter months (migrating here from the north) and has been extending its breeding range south in recent years. They are common on Mount Mitchell during the summer months.

Swainson’s, Bicknell’s, and gray-cheeked thrushes migrate through our area in spring and fall on their way to and from breeding grounds farther north. These three species are rarely observed except by experienced birders.

Thrushes are large-eyed, slender-billed, strong-legged birds that as adults often display spotted breasts. Robins and bluebirds are, of course, not spot-breasted when mature, but this family characteristic is obvious while the birds are young.

Formerly just a woodland bird, many robins have now abandoned their forest abodes to nest near human residences where shrubs and scattered trees provide protection and easy access to lawns. Still, when driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway or other high-elevation roadways during the breeding season, it’s always surprising how many robins one sees at elevations above 5,000 feet. And when you camp in the spruce-fir region, it’s often the robin’s song that first breaks the pre-dawn silence.

In winter, you can easily spot the large nests that the female constructs in the crotch of a small tree or on the horizontal limb of a larger tree. Inside the nest you will find a mud cup lined with dry grasses and other vegetation.

Robins feed upon various insects, fruits, and berries, but their preferred food — just like the school primers and cartoons say — is the lowly but nutritious earthworm, which they apparently locate by both sight and sound. A robin with a cocked head is actually listening for underground worm movement. And they have been observed using small sticks to rake aside leaves in order to expose worms and insects — an instance of “tool use” normally not associated with birds.

During the winter months — especially January and February — robins gather in large communal flocks that may number a thousand birds. Flocks that frequent our cove periodically (about once every five years or so) roost in a stand of large white oaks high on the ridge so as to catch the first warm rays of the morning sun and gradually work their way into the valley as the sun warms up the slopes.

In the 19th century, Audubon reported that hunters sought out their communal roosts with “bows and arrows, blowpipes, guns, and traps of different sorts,” causing “a sort of jubilee” as they slaughtered the birds for their plump breast meat. One of my great-aunts in piedmont Virginia, who grew up during the lean, hard days following the Civil War always professed a fondness for robin meat. She paid me an allowance for each one I shot with my BB gun and brought to the kitchen. That’s how I got into birding.

Charlotte Hilton Green, in her book Birds of the South (1933), stated that, “The greatest migratory flock of robins ever known was seen near New Hope, Gaston County, North Carolina. Game Warden Ford estimated that there were several millions roosting in the pinewoods. For over a week they wheeled about in the sky, coming to rest in the woods, and in flight they appeared like dark clouds. This great flock was the nearest approach of modern times to the flocks of passenger pigeons that, only a few generations ago, were so numerous that they darkened the earth during their migratory flights .... May the day never come when our robin red-breasts will likewise fail to be numbered among the winged travelers of the skies.”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Some years ago, when I was first interested in plant identification, I became curious about liverworts. They are one of the distinctive plant groups (like fungi, lichens, mushrooms, etc.) without advanced vascular systems.

The very name “liverwort” was intriguing, but I didn’t really know what one looked like. So I studied the illustrations and texts in several plant books and went out looking for liverworts in the woodlands near my house. It was the sort of low-key “adventure” that botanizers relish. We’d rather locate a new type of plant, however mundane, than encounter a dinosaur.

I was armed with the information that “wort” means plant or herb, and that the first part of their common name derives from the fact that about one-fifth of all liverworts grow in flattened lobes (thalli) that somewhat resemble the human liver. Moreover, liverworts were reported to be “particularly abundant in rocky, moist places where the light level is too low for competing flowering plants.”

I decided to restrict my hunt to those more obvious types that display a ribbon-like thallus rather than those that closely resemble moss. And it seemed as if I needed to head down the creek from my house, where there’s plenty of shade and an abundance of rock seepage slopes along the pathway.

I’d advanced perhaps 75-feet down the creek when I spotted my first liverwort stand. A little colony was growing on a small outcrop situated in perpetual shade just above the creek. I’d walked past it hundreds of times in the past without knowing that liverworts even existed.

Several weeks later, looking out my kitchen window toward the springhead behind the house, I spotted a colony of several thousand liverworts growing along a small streambed. Which all goes to prove, I suppose, that you generally have to know what you’re looking for before you’ll actually “see” it.

I have become fond of liverworts and no longer go near a seepage area or waterfall without looking for them. In liverworts, one can observe an example of the type plant that bridged fundamental evolutionary gap between aquatic algae and the land-dwelling plants millions upon millions of years ago. Like ferns and club mosses — which represent the next step up the evolutionary ladder — they live on land and reproduce by spores but must do so in damp places because they have no protective outer layer to prevent water loss. In addition, their free-swimming sperm require a film of water to reach and fertilize the egg cells.

I have learned that liverworts exist in two forms that can be readily distinguished. First, there’s the gametophyte plant (the ribbon-like thallus); and second, there are the sporophyte plants (resembling tiny umbrellas) that grow out of the thallus and contain the male and female sexual parts.

As each liverwort plant is either male or female, colonies that reproduce successfully in a sexual manner (cross-fertilization) grow closely together — often overlapping in dense, tangled mats — so that the transmission of sperm can take place via the constant moisture covering the plants. Such a colony resembles a miniature rain forest as viewed from an airplane.

To insure reproduction when there isn’t enough moisture, liverworts also reproduce asexually by little cups or nests that form on the thallus. Inside these cups, very small spherical bodies (gemmae) appear that eventually detach themselves and germinate directly into new plants. The cups containing these gemmae resemble tiny bird nests.

And as a final reproductive backup, some species are able to divide themselves where forks develop along the thallus strands and go their separate asexual ways. Each of these detached branches may fork again and separate, without any apparent limit, ad infinitum.

It’s easy to cull through a dense liverwort colony and locate branching divisions that are just about to divide in this manner. It’s a system whereby the youngest part of the plant body is always in the forefront, nearest the fork, while the older, dying part brings up the rear. Curiously enough, when death reaches a fork, it creates new life.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

omething banged against the office window above my desk. I assumed it was a bird of some sort. And since my office is upstairs over Main Street just off the town square in Bryson City — where the bird population is not varied — I was thinking house sparrow or starling.

Standing and looking out onto the window ledge, I saw an immature mourning dove. Obviously stunned by the collision, it remained hunkered-down on its belly, looking straight up through the windowpane at me. Since it didn’t appear to have a neck or wing injury, I didn’t attempt to open the window and help out.

Sure enough, after several moments, the bird got to its feet, shook its head to clear out the cobwebs, walked over to the edge of the ledge and peered down to check out the street below. It then came back to the window for another look at me.

I suppose from a bird’s point-of-view the species “Homo sapiens” is something of a curiosity. From my viewpoint any chance to observe an animal up close for an extended period — especially a bird— is welcomed.

Mourning doves have been, it seems to me, becoming more numerous each year here in Western North Carolina. Even walking up on them in downtown parking lots — where they come to find grit to help in the digestion of food — is a common experience. Often they wait until almost tread upon before suddenly flying straight up on reverberating wings to a nearby telephone line or tree.

When a plant or animal is encountered almost daily, it’s all too easy to sort of stop seeing them. Something registers in our brain identifying it as a dove or a daisy or a squirrel or a daylily or our neighbor, but in such instances we have to make an effort to really see anew with fresh eyes.

“Study the familiar,” one of the old Chinese sages admonished. Chinese sages were always admonishing other people to do this or that; yet, paying attention is easier said than done.

That sudden early-morning thump on the windowpane had in this instance truly gotten my attention so that I was able to look more closely than is usually the case. We — the bird and I — studied one another for the next 15 or so minutes.

Other than being slightly smaller and lacking the purple iridescence on the nape and sides of the neck of mature doves (especially males), this bird also had not assumed the sleek, streamlined plumage it would acquire before long. It had the fluffy sort of baffled appearance characteristic of young birds of any species.

It did have the distinctive black spotting on the brownish-gray upper body that serves as camouflage for the species in open fields and nest sites. And its head was noticeably small in contrast with overall body size — a feature that’s easy to note when spotting mourning doves on telephone wires along roadsides.

In our area, mourning doves like to build their nests in white pines where the spoke-like whorl of limbs joins the main trunk. It wasn’t possible to determine exactly how old my visitor might be, but it’s probable that he or she wasn’t more than a couple of weeks out of the shell. Mourning doves have protracted breeding seasons, during which they produce up to six broods during a given year. Once a baby dove is about twelve days old, it’s shooed out of the nest.

While in the nest, they are fed an extremely nutritious milk-like substance called “pigeon’s milk” or “crop milk” generated from seeds in the lining of the adult’s crops. This fluid is then “pumped up” so that the babies access it by inserting their bills into the base of the parent’s bill just above a red marking that serves as a feeding-target. After dining in this manner for about 10 days, the immature birds are weaned onto a diet of seeds ... then they’re on their own.

When not eyeballing me, my newfound acquaintance on the ledge waddled back and forth inspecting and occasionally digesting bits of sand and debris. After awhile, the bird moved over to the window and pecked on the glass, as if wanting in.

I started to unlatch the window and open it a few inches to see if the bird did indeed want to join me. But the commotion was too much for the inquisitive bird’s nerves. In the blink of an eye, it was across the street perched on the alarm tower atop the fire station.

The telephone on my desk rang. By the time I’d hung up and looked again, it was gone.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

In the beginning, the people say, the dog was put on the mountain and the wolf beside the fire. When winter came the dog could not stand the cold, so he came down to the settlement and drove the wolf from the fire. The wolf ran to the mountains, where it suited him so well that he prospered and increased, until after awhile he ventured down again and killed some animals in the settlements. The people got together and followed and killed him, but his brothers came from the mountain and took such revenge that ever since the people have been afraid to hunt the wolf.

— James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (1900)

I’ve been thinking about wolves. This past weekend my family watched the VHS version of “Jeremiah Johnson,” starring Robert Redford. Directed by Sydney Pollack, who passed away this past May, the movie premiered in 1972.

Having seen less than 100 movies in my entire life, I’m not a film critic by any means. But I think it’s a good movie, with exciting scenery (apparently in Utah), sparse dialogue, and lots of action.

One of the episodes involves an attack on Jeremiah’s horse and burro in which he helps fight off a pack of wolves. The savagery lasts for several hectic minutes, with hooves flying, wolves snarling and gnashing, guns blazing, and Jeremiah severely wounded before the pack retreats.

Timber or gray wolves formerly ranged over most of North America, but no longer exist in the wild in the eastern United States. The demise of the wolf began with the arrival of the colonial settlers, who brought an inbred fear and hatred of the “blood-thirsty varmint” from Europe and would not tolerate raids upon their livestock.

The first wolf bounty was set in eastern North Carolina in 1748 at 10 shillings for each wolf scalp. Bounty hunters pursued them with guns, dogs, and wolf pits. After the American Revolution, the bounty in North Carolina climbed to $5 per scalp.

This intense pressure helped drive most of the remaining wolf population into the North Carolina mountains by the early 1800s, where skillful hunters familiar with the upcountry terrain were required. The period of the Civil War marked a resurgence of wolves as many excellent marksmen were pulled out of the mountains or otherwise occupied by the conflict so that the multiplying wolves became increasingly brazen.

But by the 1880s, they had become a scarce commodity even in Western North Carolina. According to Mammals in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1985) the “last gray wolf was killed in Haywood County in 1887.

That date seems unlikely as “The Bryson City (NC) Times” was referring to wolves being “up around Clingman’s Dome” on into the early 1890s. And reports of their presence in both WNC and east Tennessee lingered on into the early 20th century.

Scalp bounties were paid in both Swain and Clay counties North Carolina in 1889. The Swain County bounty was paid by the county commissioners, who “allotted Q.L. Rose $5 for wolf scalp.” That was, of course, the legendary fiddle-player, storyteller, blockader, and hunter Aquila (“Quil”) Rose, who made his home on Eagle Creek in the present day Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In Cherokee lore, wolves were known and revered as Wa’ya. They were the companions and servants of Kanati, the mythical master hunter of the Cherokees. One of Kanati’s wolves had magic powers that enabled it to cure another wolf that had been bitten by a snake. Because of its ability to remain awake during the first seven days of creation, Wa’ya was given the power of night vision so that it could be active at night and easily prey upon other animals for sustenance.

According to anthropologist James Mooney, who collected Cherokee lore during the late 1880s, primarily in the Big Cove community of the Qualla Boundary, an ordinary Cherokee would never kill a wolf “if he can possibly avoid it, but will let the animal go by unharmed, believing that the kindred of a slain wolf will surely revenge his death, and that the weapon with which the deed is done will be rendered worthless for further shooting until cleaned and exorcised by a medicine man.” Certain hired killers who followed elaborate rituals for atonement could slay wolves that raided stock or fish traps.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..