Don Hendershot
Only you can apply the brakes to slow down the Courthouse Timber Sale and get everyone to take a closer look. This sale – scheduled for nearly 500 acres in the Pisgah National Forest near the foot of Devils Courthouse – has been through the various assessment channels including NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) and is now open to public comment.
Friday, Dec. 28, was the date of the eleventh annual Balsam Christmas Bird Count (CBC) — 11 dates but 10 actual counts as the 2009 CBC was cancelled due to inclement weather. This year’s weather was much better for the Balsam count — cloudy to overcast, breezy and cool but not too bad.
I wrote about wood storks, Mycteria americana, back in August of this year after a trip to Isle of Palms in South Carolina (www.smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/8361-stoked-for-storks). It was really cool to see these large prehistoric-looking birds cruising over the marsh in undulating lines. And it seems that more stork lines must be undulating over more marsh and/or wetlands across the Southeast because the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service just announced that they planned to upgrade the wood stork’s status from endangered to threatened.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a great wilderness of about a half-million square acres. It has been the mission of the Park to preserve the thousands of species of plants and animals that live there and, where and when possible, reintroduce species that used to occur there but are now gone.
Ladies and gentlemen, return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. Spaceship Earth will be screeching to a stop at 6:12 a.m. EST, Dec. 21. After we’re stopped, feel free to unclick; go to the restroom; get up and stretch your legs; we will be stopped for awhile to gather supplies, refuel and prepare to blast off for our southward journey.
First Mate McConnell: “Cap’n the ship is headed straight for that iceberg and there’s no way we kin stop her in time!”
Captain Boehner: “Don’t worry mate. I have a plan.”
FM McConnell: “What kin we do?”
Don’t know why, but the last two birding trips to Tessentee Bottomland Preserve in Macon County — one last Sunday and one in November a year ago — have been rushed affairs, allowing about two-and-a-half hours of birding from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Now, of course, two-and-a-half hours of birding at Tessentee is much better than no birding at Tessentee, but I would love to have more time to chase more LBJs (little brown jobs) from thicket to thicket and more time to hit more of the trails.
Back in spring of 2011 I wrote about a wetlands restoration project at Lake Junaluska - www.smokymountain news.com/archives/item/3686-a-perfect-fit. Candace Stimson, in order to fulfill her Low Impact Development degree at Haywood Community College, unearthed Suzy’s Branch behind Jones Cafeteria and created about 100 feet of free-flowing stream and wetlands.
Early mornings kind of go with the territory around here. With work, kids and the never-ending list of chores, every homeowner know the wee hours are often the only time one has to exhale. But I’m a crepuscular creature, and that suits me just fine.
Last Sunday morning (Nov. 11), I took my coffee out on the deck just as the southeastern sky was beginning to turn rosy around the peaks of the mountains. Sitting in the not dark but not light, just out of the sun’s grasp, was a crescent sliver of light clinging to the bottom of a dark round shadow moon. And beside this waning crescent moon was shimmering blue Venus. The two danced together teasingly just ahead of Sol as he lumbered over the mountains to start the day.
Last Saturday (Nov. 3) was this year’s annual fall hike in the Waynesville watershed. The hikes started back in 2007, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to tag along on most. The Waynesville watershed comprises nearly 8,600 acres, most of which are protected by conservation easements. The watershed is off limits to the public except for these annual (spring and fall) town sponsored hikes. The hikes are a way for town residents and other interested parties to get a glimpse of this wonderful resource that has been protected to insure the town has an ample supply of high-quality drinking water for generations to come.
Finch irruptions are not that uncommon. They generally occur in some numbers, in some locations almost every year. But in some years the movements are larger and more widespread. The winter of 2012-2013 is shaping up to be one of those years. Irruptions are not necessarily caused by inclement weather. It appears to be more associated with a lack of available food.
This morning when I had coffee on my deck, I did not hear the hooded warbler that nests in the tangles in the young woods below my yard. I did not hear a northern parula singing from the tops of the tulip poplars. There was no buzzy black-throated blue song emanating from the rhododendrons along the little creek. I did not hear a single raspy “chickbuuurrrr” anywhere in the forest. There were no schizoid red-eyed vireos talking to themselves as they bounced from tree to tree, and no wood thrushes graced the early morning with their sweet flute song.
Waiting in the ubiquitous checkout line, I spied a National Geographic special publication, “50 of the World’s last great places – Destinations of a Lifetime.” Thumbing through, right between Bialowieza (remnants of ancient European forests on the border of Poland and Belarus) and Canada’s oldest national park, Banff, was our own Jocassee Gorges.
Or at least a younger one anyway — one of the ranking members of the House’s Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Rep. Paul Broun, R-Georgia, told a gathering at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Ga., on Sept. 27 that the world was about 9,000 years old.
Editor’s note: Naturalist Don Hendershot is writing a series of articles exploring alternative fuels.
Natural gas is the fossil alternative to fossil fuels. It is a fossil fuel composed of the remains of eons-old plants and animals. And like oil it is found in underground reservoirs. Natural gas proponents note that reserves of natural gas are greater than those of oil. But critics are quick to point out that those reserves are based on today’s usage and those reserves will begin to dwindle more quickly as natural gas becomes a bigger part of the energy picture. The scenario would likely be similar to the current oil situation with “cheap” natural gas being replaced by “expensive” natural gas as demand and usage increase.
Apparently what was apparent to many scientists and researchers back in 2008 is becoming more apparent — or not.
Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder has been raising hackles and eyebrows for the better part of the last decade. Colony Collapse, characterized by the sudden disappearance of most of the adult bees in a colony, began making real headlines around 2006. And not long after, one particular class of pesticides — neonicotinoids — became a prime suspect.
I had the pleasure of leading nine women from the Great Smoky Mountains Audubon Chapter on an outing along the Blue Ridge Parkway last Saturday (Sept. 22.) Initially hyped as a birding trip, the early fog and high wind had us focusing on many other aspects of nature. Now this isn’t to say birds weren’t there, just conditions were difficult for getting good looks.
Last Saturday, Sept. 15, was surely a gorgeous day to be ridge running high in the Plott Balsams — clear blue skies dotted with white puff-clouds; temperatures in the low to mid 60s; a great day for a hike. Not even the weight of chainsaws, brush cutters, loppers and/or swing blades could dampen the spirit or curb the enthusiasm of the dedicated crew of trail-keepers that set out from Waterrock Knob to Yellow Face and on to Blackrock.
Editor’s note: This is another in a series of columns by Don Hendershot about alternative energy
Ethanol
Ethanol is grain alcohol produced by fermenting biomass like corn. It was one of the first vehicle fuels produced in this country but like others fell by the wayside with the rise of cheap oil. Ethanol is primarily produced as blends with gasoline. Those blends containing a small about of ethanol like E10 — 10 percent ethanol, 90 percent gasoline — have been around for a number of years, known as gasohol. Any gasoline vehicle can run on E10 and E10 is not considered an alternative fuel under the Energy Policy Act.
This week’s alternative fuels column will discuss three fuels (methanol, p-series and hydrogen) that all have one thing in common — unavailability. Two of these fuels’ futures look bleak but that could, of course, change with a wave of the government’s magic “incentives and subsidies” wand.
The diesel engine created by Rudolf Diesel was designed to run on biodiesel. The prototype demonstrated at the World Fair in Paris in 1853 ran on peanut oil but the glut of cheap oil and the rabid expansion of the petroleum industry quickly co-opted Diesel’s engine.
Everyone who woke up to 48 degrees Fahrenheit this morning knows that the days of “butts in the creek” are quickly fading for this year. Planning for the inevitable and being parents of kids who are, if not part fish at least amphibian, we had plans for a last wet hurrah last weekend (Sept. 7-9.)
I don’t know the source but in my college days there was an aphorism — “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with BS.” There appears to be a lot of baffling going on in the alternative fuel arena. Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of intelligent, creative, conscientious people out there trying to pull the fossil fuel needle from our collective vein — but it ain’t gonna happen cold turkey. Believe me, there’s more than your commute to work at stake here.
Although my series on alternative fuels is done, I think I will stay in the alternative universe.
Science, which is defined as the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation and theoretical explanation of phenomena, is based on adherence to the scientific method. The scientific method broken down by physics professor Jose Wuda at the University of California-Riverside basically follows a series of steps:
• Observe some aspect of nature.
• Invent a tentative description—called a hypothesis—that is consistent with what you have observed.
• Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
• Test those predictions by experiments or further observations, and then modify the hypothesis according to the results.
• Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there is no discrepancy between the hypothesis and experimental results, observations, or both.
Don’t get bored. Hang with me here. Ornithology, according to wikipedia.org, is “... the branch of biology concerned with the scientific study of birds.”
When ornithologists announced the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker (last documented in the U.S. in the 1940s) one would assume that rigorous scientific inquiry and strict adherence to the scientific method had led to such an astounding announcement. One would be wrong.
Here’s a quick capsule of the ivory-billed debacle (or “Lord God What a Mess”): To give credit where credit is due, the current ivory-billed hoopla started, appropriately enough, on April Fool’s Day in 1999 when a Louisiana State University forestry student convinced his professors he had seen a pair of ivory-billeds in Honey Swamp in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area. A subsequent search by ornithologists and renowned birders proved fruitless. However in 2004, kayaker Gene Sparling posted on the Internet that he had seen what he believed could have been an ivory-billed woodpecker on the Cache River in Arkansas. Sparling also noted that he had seen some aberrantly colored pileated woodpeckers in the same area. Enter Bobby Harrison, ivory-billed devotee and photography professor at Oakwood College in Alabama. Harrison, who had been looking for ivory-billeds for 30 years or so, called Sparling and convinced him he had seen an ivory-billed. Next, Harrison and fellow Ivory-billed fanatic Tim Gallagher of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who, as luck would have it, was just finishing his book, The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, went to the swamp in the Big Woods, and, lo and behold, the last chapter of Gallagher’s book flew by. After the two fell about the swamp sobbing, they reported their sighting and waited for others to corroborate it – and waited and waited.
Serendipity struck again. While further sightings could not be substantiated, a video camera attached to a canoe and left running caught on tape what could definitively be described as maybe a big black and white bird. And that was all Cornell needed. A press conference was called in DC and Bush Administration lackeys ohhooed and ahhhed over the amazing scientific “rediscovery.” Subsequent searches in 2005, 2006 and 2007 have failed to provide hard evidence of the bird.
Not to be outdone, ornithology professor Geoff Hill of Auburn who, coincidentally, authored his own ivory-billed woodpecker book — Ivorybill Hunters: The Search for Proof in a Flooded Wilderness — reported, in 2005, that he had discovered ivory-billed woodpeckers along the Choctawhatchee River in Florida. Once again, subsequent searches have failed to document those claims.
Along with human searchers, Cornell and Auburn both employed automated recording units (ARUs) and remote cameras. Cornell estimated that their ARU surveys in 2004-2005 alone were equivalent to three years of continuous recording. Auburn has thousands of hours of ARU recordings from Florida. All of these thousands and thousands of hours of recordings from Florida and Arkansas have one thing in common — they have failed to produce a sonogram that matches the only known recording of an actual ivory-billed woodpecker. And the only images captured of large woodpeckers by thousands of hours of remote camera surveillance at “interesting” foraging sign and cavities “too large for pileated woodpeckers” have been pileated woodpeckers.
Undoubtedly the scientific method has to be tweaked somewhat when it comes to ivory-billed woodpeckers:
• Start with observers who desperately want to see a particular aspect of nature.
• Observe some aspect of nature like a large black and white bird.
• Invent a tentative description (hypothesis) – ivory-billed woodpecker.
• Make predictions – ivory-billed woodpeckers exist in Arkansas and Florida.
• Test those predictions – hundreds of thousands of man and machine hours that fail to document hypothesis.
• Disregard the discrepancy between the hypothesis and observations.
• Take all your “may have beens,” “could have beens” and “hoped-fors” and wrap them in pseudo-scientific jargon like “putative kent calls,” “impenetrable swamp,” “wary, elusive bird” etc., and you have all the scientific documentation you need to assert the continued existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker.
An unplanned trip to Louisiana the first weekend in August sent us to the land of the heat-index factor. Of course, Louisiana in August is supposed to be hot and we weren’t disappointed with temperatures climbing to the high 90s every afternoon.
Those quiet mornings are starting to set in. Yesterday, the only morning chorister in full song, in my yard was a Carolina wren. My summer-hooded warbler could be heard occasionally, but it was like he was humming to himself. Immature towhees were shouting out “drink!” from the tangles and there was an assortment of humming bird squeaks and chickadee and titmouse grousing but the rousing morning chorus that has been with us since early May is gone.
Somewhere in the deep reaches of Sugar and/or Grandfather Mountains, seeps, rivulets and trickles begin to mingle and grow and slide over the hard rocks coalescing into the headwaters of the Linville River.
The river slips over the rocks and begins a 2,000-foot descent. It’s a path carved in stone over millennia resulting in one of the most dramatic, beautiful, rugged and diverse wildernesses in the country — Linville Gorge Wilderness.
I was outside with Maddie (6) the other afternoon and there was a gentle breeze. “Daddy, doesn’t it smell like autumn?” she asked.
And it did. In fact, I had just had the same sensation only didn’t mention it because what would a 6-year-old know? Obviously much more than we give them credit for.
“Gambling on a Ghost Bird” in the current issue of the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/5840/888/F1 - there’s a $10 fee) regarding the “rediscovery” of the ivory-billed woodpecker in 2004 and the subsequent lack of documentation, makes for a very interesting read.
Scott McLeod, my editor, tossed an Aug. 20, 2007, New Yorker on his desk and said there was a good article about light pollution in it and wondered if I was interested. I was. But I’m sure that doesn’t come as a surprise to many Smoky Mountain News readers who think McLeod and I are in the dark about a lot of things.
As we started over the bridge on the Isle of Palms Connector, I noticed a line of large black and white birds through the pine trees. “Gourd heads,” I must have said out loud, because my wife said, “What?”
“Wood storks,” I said, pointing to the undulating line of five or six wood storks, alternately flapping and gliding across the marsh at low tide.
Balsam Mountain Preserve is, first and foremost, a real estate development. As such, it is subject to all the pressures, schedules, deadlines, etc., that plague all developments. What was to (and in many cases has) separate BMP from most real estate developments was their commitment to protecting the environment and serving as a model for “environmentally sensitive” development.
It’s almost fall and the skies are beginning to fill with feathered vagabonds headed to their traditional southern winter habitats. I have noticed mixed flocks of songbirds foraging in my yard recently. Mr. Mom — that’s me on Tuesdays and Wednesdays — looked out the kitchen window yesterday morning (9/4) and noted a lot of activity. So I grabbed my binoculars, a few of her toys and Maddy (my soon-to-be 2-year-old) and headed out on the deck. Maddy loves to be outside, so Daddy figured he could spy on birds as Maddy played — muti-tasking in a way that would make Mom envious. It went kinda like this:
One of those paradoxes of getting older: it seems you have more occasions to gather with friends and family, but these occasions are too often funerals. Last weekend I made a whirlwind trip to Biloxi, Miss., to be with my best friend as his dad, a WWII veteran, was interred at Biloxi National Cemetery. It was my first trip to the Gulf Coast since Katrina and fittingly, I traveled through some heavy rain and winds generated by Hurricane Humberto.
Last week I wrote about the dark subterranean part of our little family adventure, which was a visit to Linville Caverns (see www.smokymountainnews.com/outdoors/item/8139).
From the dark caverns of Linville we turned our attention to the light and headed for the highest peak east of the Mississippi — Mt. Mitchell.
Our Linville Caverns guide told us, at the end of the caverns, that we were a half-mile underground. I find that kind of hard to believe — maybe she meant we were a half-mile below the summit of Humpback Mountain. But if we were, indeed, a half-mile underground, our ascent to the top of Mt. Mitchell would have been a total elevation gain of approximately 9,324 feet.
Bluebird skies are wonderful for lots of things. For example, along U.S. Hwy. 64 west of Franklin the other day the clear blue created the perfect backdrop for the dazzling display of blue and yellow produced by the masses of asters and goldenrods.
Site nominations for the mountain region of the North Carolina Birding Trail kicked off Oct. 1. Sites for the coastal region and piedmont region have been selected and mapped.
Legend has it that curious fishermen watching trout seemingly disappear into Humpback Mountain back in 1822 discovered an entrance into what is now known as Linville Caverns. Henry E. Colton of eastern North Carolina and once a state geologist for the state of Tennessee was one of the discoverers. Colton wrote about the discovery in an 1858 issue of the NC Presbyterian: “… we emerged into an immense passage, whose roof was far beyond the reach of the glare of our torches, except where the fantastic festoons of stalactites hang down within our touch. It looked like the arch of some grand old cathedral, yet it was too sublime, too perfect in all its beautiful proportions, to be anything of human …”
For the more intrepid sojourner, the word “wilderness” may conjure up visions of Death Valley, the Alaska Peninsula or the Atchafalaya Swamp. For a soon-to-be 2-year-old and a soon-to-be 6-year-old, a wilderness may be as close as a nearby weedy hillside.
NBC News did a segment of their “Fleecing of America” on the $27.8 million proposed by the recovery plan, which prompted a flurry of emails in the blogosphere and across birding listservs noting that $27.8 million was a paltry sum — a mere drop in the bucket. Well, yes and no.
I’m so dizzy
I tripped over the equinox and fell backwards away from the sun, and now I’m spinning so fast it takes me longer to raise my head high enough to see the sunrise. The light quickly passes my feet before waffling in the dusk and turning to darkness.
It’s Halloween and goblins, ghouls, witches and vampires are wreaking havoc — and that’s before they get all that sugar in ‘em. And what would Halloween be without bats? Not a single haunted house will be without these fiendish creatures, waiting to suck your blood or fly into your hair if you happen to be a woman of female persuasion. And sometimes bats are not really bats but vampires and witches in disguise.
OK, now that I’ve got your attention — there has been a recent flurry of hyperbole, rhetoric and misinformation regarding the Waynesville Watershed and its management plan. Clearly this flood of ink was designed to influence town elections.
It’s a little unsettling to hear your kindergartner’s voice when you answer the phone at midday. But I could tell immediately from Izzy’s voice that she was OK — just a bit excited.
Alaskan shooters are poised to take to the skies again this year to slaughter as many wolves as possible. This is about to happen despite the fact that the Airborne Hunting Act of 1972 makes the use of aircraft to shoot or harass animals illegal and despite the fact that the citizens of Alaska have voted twice, once in 1999 and again in 2000 to ban the practice. Enough signatures have been collected this year to put the issue on the ballot again in 2008.
Common redpolls have been reported in Chatham County and evening grosbeaks in Catawba County here in North Carolina. Bohemian waxwings and pine grosbeaks have been recorded from Maine to Michigan and Wisconsin. It looks like winter finches may be on the move.
The call of, “Come see! A frog!” is one oft repeated in the Hendershot household from spring through fall as toads go by both names – toad and/or frog. So the other morning when Izzy called to, ”Come see this frog!” I was expecting another toad. But when I walked to the front door, there on one of the glass panes next to the door was a treefrog – round saucer toes keeping it firmly planted on the glass.
It’s that time of year again when passing fronts will mean passing visitors at Lake Junaluska. Waterfowl were riding the cold winds that kicked up on Thanksgiving.
“ATBI identifies 5,000-plus species — 1/10/07
I have written several columns regarding this ambitious program to document all species within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which began on Earth Day in 1998. By January 2007 over 5,000 species new to the park had been recorded and 651 of those were new to science.
I know, I know, it’s not Jan. 1 yet. But that’s just a date on a calendar. This year, Dec. 23 is the beginning of the new year. Dec. 22 is the winter solstice — the longest night of the year. Starting Sunday, Dec. 23, the days will be getting longer.
