A Cherokee Preservation Foundation grant awarded in March is allowing the N.C. Arboretum’s ecoEXPLORE program to deliver monthly environmental programming for kids at locations throughout Cherokee.

Go birding at Buck Spring along the Blue Ridge Parkway with an expedition meeting 8 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 17, at Jukebox Junction in Bethel.

Howard Browers will lead the walk. Loaner binoculars are available. Cost is $10. Sign up at bit.ly/haywoodrec.

Catch a doubleheader in mountain education with a pair of programs offered through the University of Tennessee Smoky Mountain Field School Saturday, Aug. 19.

Author and biologist David George Haskell will delve into the captivating world of sonic communication and its profound impact on the planet’s evolution and cultural tapestry during a lecture at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 27, at the Highlands Nature Center in Highlands.

A bluebird has been knocking at our door this week — at the glass storm door, that is — and at the transom over the door and the windows nearby.

Record wildlife and remove litter from the Deep Creek area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Bryson City during a family-friendly event Friday, July 14, and Saturday, July 15.

Lately we’ve been enjoying the hummingbirds each morning on our back deck.

For the past few years, whenever I encounter the whorled loosestrife growing along a trail or roadside I have been saying its name out loud, and slowly. Like a prayer: “World, lose strife.”

(Editor’s note: The first installment of this story was published in the May 10 issue of The Smoky Mountain News and is online here.) 

Plants and butterflies have a long history of evolution and interconnected relationships. Plants serve as food for caterpillars who eat their leaves to gain energy for their growth and transformations. This co-evolved host-plant relationship mostly occurs between native plants and native caterpillars. Many butterflies depend on this relationship for their lives.