Don Hendershot
Winter solstice
The only New Year’s resolution that I know I have kept came after a particularly devastating New Year’s morning back in January 1970, when I resolved to never ever drink another sloe gin fizz – a resolution I have kept till this day. The problem with most New Year’s resolutions is that they’re improbable at best, impossible at worst.
The fifth annual Balsam Christmas Bird Count was conducted last Saturday, Dec. 30. The 15-mile diameter circle, which covers a large portion of western Haywood County as well as Balsam Mountain Preserve in Jackson County, is one of more than 1,800 official Audubon count circles. This year marked the 107th annual Audubon CBC.
The All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, an ambitious project to identify every organism in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is rolling into its eighth year of study and sampling. As of October 2006, the ATBI has identified 5,317 new species in the GSMNP. Of those 5,317 species, 651 are new to science.
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has decided that creating an urban bowhunting season would be a wonderful resource municipalities could use to lessen the negative impacts of deer/human conflicts.
This week’s column is a follow-up to last week’s piece about urban archery seasons and deer/human conflicts within municipalities. Most regular readers of The Naturalist’s Corner know that I am not an advocate of hunting or any blood sport — been there, done that and have developed a different attitude regarding the creatures with which we share the planet.
This past summer I stopped feeding birds, except for the hummers. The squirrels had become too brazen and were chewing everything and anything on the deck and beating on the windows, demanding food.
In 1885 Jerome B. Freeman built a stairway to the top of a 535-million-year-old granite monolith overlooking Hickory Nut Gorge.
Now here’s a way to bird from your kitchen table, in your pajamas and slippers, with a steaming hot cup of coffee in your hand. This year will be the tenth annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). The count is a collaboration between Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. It is sponsored in part by Wild Birds Unlimited so you don’t even have to fork over the five bucks required to participate in the annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC). Count dates are Feb. 16-19.
The Western Carolina Forest Sustainability Initiative (WCFSI) under the direction of Pete Bates, associate professor of Natural Resources Management at WCU, grew out of the Little Tennessee Sustainable Forestry Initiative that was created in 2002. The LTSFI was a collaboration among the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee (LTLT), WCU’s geosciences and natural resources management, Duke University and The Conservation Fund.
The folks in the mountains of Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee share more than a common boundary, they share a deep appreciation for the wild, sometimes rugged, but always beautiful landscape they call home.
I guess the real Bayou Noire would be in Houma or Sulphur or somewhere else across Acadiana, where the slow water in the bayou is dark enough to be called black. The Bayou Noire I just returned from was Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Monroe, La. Monroe is three-and-a-half hours from Acadiana by car, but a civilization away.
It’s March 1, the night is black and soggy. It’s around 50 degrees and “pourin the rain” as natives say.
Did you ever wonder why this big, furry, long-eared mammal was hoping around with eggs in its basket?
Twelve of the world’s foremost salamander authorities converged on Balsam Mountain Preserve Sunday March 11 for an informal survey. The program was facilitated by Balsam Mountain Preserve’s senior naturalist Blair Ogburn, who seemed right at home with her most distinguished colleagues.
George Ellison talked about the harbingers of spring in his Feb. 28 column in The Smoky Mountain News. Well those harbingers now have lots of company.
First let me get this disclaimer out of the way. I am thrilled to hear that Congressman Heath Shuler has joined Sen. Lamar Alexander and others from North Carolina and Tennessee on Capitol Hill to officially ask for a cash settlement to Swain County, in lieu of a North Shore Road. I’m especially happy to see that Sen. Elizabeth Dole has finally quit waffling and signed on.
A federal judge in San Francisco told the Bush administration on March 30 that it didn’t have the right to bypass property owners when making decisions regarding their lands. Back in early 2005 the administration decided unilaterally to change the rules and regulations regarding the maintenance and care of more than 1.7 million acres without consulting the property owners.
You have to admire the tenacity of America’s armed forces. We can all take pride in the heroism, courage and valor exhibited by America’s finest down through the centuries. And the U.S. Navy is no exception. In fact, most every red-blooded American male from baby-boomer age and before has surely stood on the bow of his crippled war ship, waved his saber and boldly declared, “I have not yet begun to fight,” or perhaps “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”
The Navy has decided that a site in Washington and Beaufort counties in eastern North Carolina, about three to five miles from Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, is the ideal spot for an Outlying Landing Field (OLF) where its pilots can practice simulated carrier landings in their new super Hornet aircraft.
In late March there was a lot of talk on the Carolina birders’ listserv about early migration as Neotropical migrants began showing up. By April 1 we had already recorded blue-headed vireo, northern rough-winged swallow, blue-grey gnatcatcher and black-throated green warbler at Balsam Mountain Preserve.
One hundred and twenty people or so took advantage of Waynesville’s first Watershed Appreciation Month to see and learn more about the town’s 8,600-acre watershed. The program ran the last three Saturdays in April and included hikes and presentations in the watershed plus programs at town hall.
May 5 was a soggy morning. At 7:30 a.m. a light drizzle had engulfed Lake Junaluska. We sat in our cars and debated our plight. This was the date selected for the Haywood County Arts Council “Fun Party – Art of Birdwatching.” About 20 arts patrons were beginning to wonder how much fun they were going to have.
Conscientious, detailed vacation planning; anticipating the “what ifs” and having contingency plans; route planning and hashing out all the logistics can surely make that extended vacation a lot smoother and more relaxing. But sometimes that out of the blue, spur-of-the-moment retreat can be just what the doctor ordered.
As we turn to bask in the full glow of the summer sun, mornings begin to heat up quickly. As they heat, they become quieter.
Last week, we set the stage for the 29th annual Great Smoky Mountains Birding Expedition (GSMBE). The group starts at 9 a.m. at George and Elizabeth Ellison’s office/studio in downtown Bryson City. I know, birders out there are rolling their eyes — to start a count at 9 a.m. is like missing half the day, but there are caveats.
What could be more fun than a weekend of fellowship and great birding? Maybe setting a new record for total number of species recorded during the annual Great Smoky Mountains Birding Expedition?
What falls freely from the sky, rumbles, swooshes, rolls, trickles across the planet; seeps into the earth beneath our feet yet is more valuable than “Texas T,” that foul smelling icky crude that companies spend billions to produce, only to sell for mega-billions?
We’ve had a good run in the watershed. The Town of Waynesville has sponsored spring and fall guided hikes in its 8,000-plus acre watershed since 2007. The hikes provide a great way for residents and other interested parties to see this wonderful resource that has been placed in a conservation easement to insure the town has an ample supply of high-quality drinking water for generations to come.
The blue-headed vireo sang to me of spring sometime around the first week of April. Blue-headeds are generally the last “non-resident” songbird we hear in the fall (sometimes into November) and the first we hear in the spring — probably due to the fact that many overwinter in the warmer climes of the Southeast.
Earth Day 2013 is Monday, April 22. The first official “Earth Day” occurred in 1970 and environmentalists celebrated. Environmental lawyer Chuck Dayton, who splits his time between Waynesville and the “Land of a Thousand Lakes,” pretty much summed up where we are at Earth Day, when he wrote about the 40th anniversary:
Love may be a little anthropogenic for toads, but the eons old “urge to merge” was quite prevalent last Sunday (4/7) when we were at Oconee State Park. Oconee State Park in Mountain Rest, S.C., is along U.S. Hwy 11 around 14 miles south of Cashiers and about an hour and a half drive from Waynesville.
This recent bumpy weather across the Eastern U.S. has resulted in some flight delays and changed itineraries for a bunch of seasoned fliers.
Wild South held its fifth annual Green Gala celebrating the 2012 Roosevelt-Ashe Society’s Conservation Award winners last Friday, March 22. Wild South is a regional nonprofit with offices in Asheville and Moulton, Ala., that works to protect, conserve and enhance the wild places and wild things across the South.
I have seen the light, and I don’t like it. I have seen the light emanating from strip malls; from sports stadiums; from urban skylines; from cul-de-sacs; from factories; from almost any place twilight finds Homo sapiens and I don’t like it.
So what’s in the news nowadays? Any bad news for the environment? Let’s see.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013, in the Smoky Mountain News – A story about the retirement of Blue Ridge Parkway Superintendent Phil Francis noted “… he faced continuous budget cuts, which reduced the number of full-time employees at the Parkway from more than 240 to 160.”
I know, I know, we’ve been in Louisiana for two weeks now, but when I look back at some of the photos and think of our trip I see a lot in common between public lands there and public lands here. Because of a lot of political demagoguing and hypocritical chest-thumping about fiscal conservatism with one hand while passing obscene subsidies on to the most profitable energy companies in the world with the other hand, over the past few years public agencies like the National Park System, the National Forest Service, National Wildlife Refuges and state and local parks have come to depend on “Friends” groups for basic undertakings like education, outreach and research.
What better place to start part deaux than Breaux Bridge along Bayou Teche? Firmin Breaux originally purchased the area that is now Breaux Bridge in 1771 from New Orleans businessman Jean Francois Ledée, who had acquired the land as an original French land grant. And, of course, Bayou Teche was already there, had been, in fact, for thousands of years, but not in it’s bayou form. Bayou Teche was the main channel of the Mississippi River up till about 3,000 years ago. And the Big Muddy is inching her way back, cozying up to the Atchafalaya but dams and levees and the Army Corp of Engineers are all there to see that doesn’t happen.
Translation — Great Backyard Bird Count at Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge; the tradition continues.
Since a spur-of-the-moment GBBC at Black Bayou with my brother back in 2006, I have only missed two years of counting in Louisiana. It’s a great excuse to visit friends and family with a great bird count in a beautiful setting thrown in as lagniappe. And this year’s trip followed suit beautifully.
Of course, you’re no longer confined to your backyard like you were back in 1997 when the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) launched. Sixteen years later and the GBBC is going global. Anyone around the world with Internet access can participate. The basic count format is the same. One watches at any location for at least 15 minutes – and yes your backyard feeders are still relevant – record the species seen and the number of individuals of each species.
Frost warnings and advisories across the Blue Ridge tonight (May 18) officially announce this year’s “blackberry winter.” It is coming about six weeks after “dogwood winter” and will be a much more gentle reminder of Ma Nature’s cold side. The reports I’ve seen are calling for the possibility of frost in the mountain valleys.
Biofuels have been getting a lot of media and blogosphere attention lately, and with the price of gas at $3 per gallon and climbing that’s not likely to change. Whether you get your news from the Internet, the newspaper or television, it’s easy to see that we are at a critical juncture regarding the direction of fuel production and fuel consumption here and around the world. But what direction will we take and why?
What happens when you finally get to the end of the rainbow and there’s no gold in the pot? Perusing The Smoky Mountain News the other day, I ran across Becky Johnson’s piece about the $52 million dollar cash settlement, an agreement supposedly signed, sealed and delivered in 2010 that would pay Swain County $52 million in lieu of a 1943 agreement
Over the next few weeks in The Naturalist’s Corner, I’m going to be exploring different aspects of the alternative and green energy movement.
Greenies, tree-huggers, granolas and old hippies are mothers, dads and grandmoms too. And there is a sincere desire to live and raise our children in a cleaner, safer, sustainable world. But until we greenies achieve the economical and political clout of Exxon-Mobile, Toyota and/or the governments of the G8 countries, face it, it will be utility, power and profit that will fuel the move to alternative energy.
Most people tend to think of electric (EVs) and hybrid (HEVs) vehicles in the same sphere, but the two are quite different with their own sets of pros and cons. Electric cars are powered solely by batteries that must be charged from an outside power source whereas hybrids run on a combination of battery power and internal combustion.
Editor’s note: Naturalist Don Hendershot is writing a series of columns exploring the use of alternative energy and fuels.
Hybrids are supposed to offer the best of both worlds, quiet electrical propulsion for stop-and-go driving and the power of internal combustion for those interstate cruises. The electric motor uses no energy when idling and produces no tailpipe emissions. At higher speeds the internal combustion engine kicks in for power and the acceleration American drivers have grown accustomed to.
Limeade, tequila and cointreau is not a wintry mix — that is a margarita; something you may resort to when a wintry mix turns your driveway into a sheet of ice.
The ingredients for a wintry mix are a combination of two or more of these types of frozen/freezing precipitation, snow, ice pellets/sleet, freezing rain and/or graupel (pronounced grapple.) Basic precipitation mechanics are involved.
It may not have shaken the Richter scale like the stampede of Republican lawmakers and their realtor and developer lobbyists in Raleigh back in 2011, clamoring to cut funding for the state’s Landslide Hazard Mapping program, but there were more than 50 landslides across Western North Carolina and East Tennessee after the recent heavy rains (official are still trying to get an official count). Thankfully, to my knowledge, there was no loss of life associated with these slides.
I sit this morning being bathed in luxurious rain. The kind of life-affirming, life-giving rain the Smokies are noted for. A quick run to town watching the rain cascading down the asphalt, clear here and muddy red there, being sucked in circles down storm gutters or overrunning clogged ones — and a couple of thoughts came to mind.
