No, I’m not talking about those of us who stay in the warm confines at Cataloochee, nursing Ninja porters, while the kids hit the slopes. These cold-weather wimps are ruby-throated hummingbirds. As most of you hummer-watchers know, our ruby-throats, basically the only nesting hummers in the eastern U.S., have generally all departed for warmer climes by the end of October. But are the times and maybe the climes changing?

My recent (Jan. 8-16) weekly installment of “This Week at Hilton Pond” titled “Winter Hummingbirds in the U.S. (Ruby-Throats & Global Warming)” raised some really interesting questions. This Week at Hilton Pond is a weekly e-newsletter produced by Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History’s executive director Bill Hilton Jr.

Hilton is no stranger to winter hummers. He has banded more than 80 winter hummers since 1991. I met Hilton back in 2002 when he came to the residence of Ted and Ann Kirby in Waynesville and banded a rufous hummingbird that had taken up residence — see www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/ 11_02/11_27_02/out_lola.html.

Hilton noted in the newsletter that despite all the vagrant hummers he had banded he had never banded a ruby-throated after Oct. 18 or before March 27. But according to Hilton’s account all of that changed this past December when he got a call from a friend from Buxton. This friend, who lives between the Atlantic Ocean and Pamlico Sound, reported that she had at least a half-dozen ruby-throated hummingbirds coming to feeders in her yard.

Hilton said they arrived in Buxton around 1:30 p.m. and that by 2 p.m. they had their first ruby-throat (a female) in the trap. In two days at Buxton, Hilton banded nine winter ruby-throats, seven (five females and two immature males) in his friend’s yard and two other females at an alternate site. Hilton noted that all the hummers were healthy and one was even going through its annual mid-winter molt.

Hilton, like any good scientist, is never more than a reflective moment away from “why” and/or “how.” And like any good scientist he would never posit one event as proof of anything, but keen anecdotal observations are the precursor of any hypothesis worth more study.

Hilton reflects that the warm Gulf Stream is only about 10 miles offshore of the Outer Banks and that it helps to moderate winter temps. But, “… even though the Gulf Stream has been this close for millennia there were NO reports of winter ruby-throats in North Carolina before about 1995 or so,” writes Hilton. He believes that ruby-throats on the Outer Banks may be benefiting from ever-so-slight increases in annual winter temperatures – gasp! “Climate change.”

Hilton writes, “… Mountaintop glaciers melting … polar ice fields shrinking … droughts worsening … severe storms increasing … ocean levels rising (and even affecting dunes and beaches at Cape Hatteras National Seashore) … and now “cold weather wimp” ruby-throated hummingbirds wintering where they never have before …” and wonders out loud, “… if – because of their recently acquired ability to survive WITHOUT migrating to the neotropics – ruby-throated hummingbirds are THE species that finally drives home the point that global warming is for real?”

To read Hilton’s entertaining narrative regarding the winter ruby-throats (along with his usual outstanding photography) and/or to learn more about Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History visit www.hiltonpond.org.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Thanks to a head’s up from Tim Carstens last Sunday morning (1/15), I saw a drake northern pintail, Anas acuta, at Lake Junaluska. This “nomad of the sky” is cosmopolitan in distribution, breeding in northern Europe, Asia and North America. Its range has been estimated at more than 11 million square miles and it is known to overwinter as far south as Panama, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Some even make it to Hawaii and other Pacific Islands for their winter break. Not even oceans can deter this sleek strong flyer. One pintail tagged in Labrador, Canada, was found nine days later in England and several pintails tagged in Japan have been recovered from the U.S., as far east as Mississippi.

In North America, the northern pintail breeds from the prairie pothole region of the Upper Midwest across Canada and Alaska. Nearly half of this population migrates through California. Many overwinter in California’s Central Valley but others continue south to the west coast of Mexico. Northern pintails in the Central Flyway overwinter from the Texas Panhandle down to the Gulf coast of Texas and Louisiana, most of those in the Mississippi Flyway spend their winter in Louisiana with smaller numbers spread throughout Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. The primary wintering range for northern pintails in the Atlantic Flyway is along the Atlantic coast of New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. North Carolina generally accounts for 50 percent or more of this population.

The drake northern pintail is one handsome dude. The head is chocolate brown with a clean white stripe that snakes up from the white breast and neck. The back and sides are slate-gray with black highlights and it has a bright white rump patch. The “pin” tail is long. It can account for a quarter of the total length of an adult mail in breeding plumage. The middle two tail feathers are black and the outside ones are gray with white margins. An iridescent green speculum is displayed in flight and the bill is blue with a black stripe in the center and black margins.

The female is more muted with a tawny head and a mottled brown and white body. Her bill is dark blue-gray, usually with darker blotches. The female has a rather long pointed tail as duck tails go, but nothing comparable to the male’s pin.

The drake’s tail accounts for most of the colloquial names — like spiketail, sprigtail, sprig, etc. but I knew them in Louisiana as snakeheads. I’m not sure of the origin of this name, but I’ve heard two accounts. One is the white stripe that “snakes” up the drake’s head and the other is in reference to the bird’s habits. Pintails are a skittish lot and when they’re on the water and they become alarmed they raise their heads up on their long snake-like necks to get a better look around.

Because of the pintail’s immense range and global population it is listed as a species of least concern. However, the northern pintail’s North American population has been in a tailspin since the late 1950s. Numbers have dropped from an estimated 10 million in 1957 to around 3 million today. Disease has played a part in the loss of North American pintails, both in the past and more recently. Two outbreaks of avian botulism in Canada and Utah in 1997 claimed close to a million pintails. But loss of habitat and changes in agriculture appear to be the most serious threats to North American pintails.

Numbers from the Atlantic Flyway mirror this dramatic decline. The Atlantic Flyway Midwinter Survey recorded an average of about 250,000 birds in the late 1950s. Today’s survey records about 50,000 pintails.

North Carolina joined South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Florida in 2004 to create a multiagency project committed to finding ways to reverse this population decline.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

This year’s ninth annual Balsam Christmas Bird Count (CBC) was held Friday Dec. 30. As I was driving home from work at 7 a.m. that Friday morning things were looking good. By the time I got a nap and met Paul Super, who had graciously agreed to help out, and his friend Patrick Flaherty beating the bushes around Autumn Care, it was about 12:30 p.m. and the wind was bllloooooowwwwiiinnggg!

Now wind is a terrible obstacle for birders. Birds are prone to sit tight rather than be buffeted around and you can’t here a chip note or song unless you’re within 50 feet or so of the source. But after last year’s 10 hours in the pouring rain, wind wasn’t so bad.

Paul and Patrick had already done the yeoman’s work, recording more than 30 species.

We left Autumn Care and went down to the vicinity of Barber’s Orchard to an area that had historically been very good for sparrows. Much of the landscape was altered due to the EPA cleanup or arsenic from the old orchard. While we were lamenting the lack of sparrows we looked up to see a gorgeous adult bald eagle, right overhead, flying low across the open spaces. That made us feel a little better about the lack of sparrows.

We kicked around a little more and flushed a pretty rufous-looking sparrow-sized bird from the brambles. We were all on the same page, thinking fox sparrow. But try as we might we could never coax the bird up again and, of course, no one got a fox sparrow for the count.

In fact the count total, 65 species, tied the record low for species. It was the same number we recorded last year and I, for one, would much rather be dry and wind-blown with 65 species than soaked to the bone with 65 species.

And while we tied our low record for bird species, we may have set a record for participation. I think Bob Olthoff, count compiler, said we had nearly 30 participants for this year’s count. It was a great mixture of tried and true troopers plus a good dose of new blood.

Paul, Patrick and I left the orchard and made a couple of short stops before making it to the Waynesville watershed. The reservoir was vacant of waterfowl for the second year in a row.

We did get to add golden-crowned kinglet, brown creeper, ruffed grouse and common raven to our list at the watershed. We still dipped on what one would think would be an easy find in the watershed — pileated woodpecker. We also didn’t have a regular winter resident in the area — hermit thrush. We decided to leave the watershed and head back to an area near the Waynesville Rec Center where we frequently find hermit thrushes in the winter. We dipped again.

By this time it was getting late and Patrick needed to go. I dropped Paul and Patrick and made one more mad dash to the watershed hoping to call up an owl at dusk. Once again — the best laid plans of mice and birders — not an owl around. But the bird gods smile and as I was dashing around the watershed, I spooked a hermit thrush that flushed and flew across the road right in front of me. It was the only one recorded on the count.

The lies, I mean stories, warm, tasty food and cool libations at Bocelli’s were as enjoyable and congenial as ever. And when we counted down the list we had two brand new species for the count despite the overall low total. Our group and one other nearby had seen the adult bald eagle and the Lake Junaluska group had an immature so we recorded two bald eagles (new species), and the Lake Junaluska group also recorded a greater scaup which was new for the circle.

As usual the Balsam CBC wishes to thank the staff and management at Bocelli’s for putting up with a bunch of noisy birders and to also thank the Town of Waynesville for access to the watershed and Waynesville residents Jim Francis and Glen Tolar for access to their private property.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

That’s bird-Friday of course. And bird-Friday got off to a pretty chilly start.

It was 26 degrees Fahrenheit when I got to Lake Junaluska at around 8:45 a.m. Not much has changed species-wise at the lake for the past couple of weeks or so except the red-heads were gone. At least I didn’t see any Friday. There still were plenty of ring-necked ducks, ruddy ducks, pied-billed grebes and coots. There were a couple of lesser scaup and I also saw one bufflehead, four hooded mergansers, one great blue heron, three horned grebes and one double-crested cormorant. I also found a Cooper’s hawk keeping a close watch on the coots in the little channel between the wetlands and the narrow island. Counting a few passerines, I wound up with 27 species for the hour I spent around Lake J.

Next I headed for Kituwah to get my sparrow fix and see what else I might find. I got to Kituwah around 11 a.m. and it was still cool, mid-30s, but warming nicely. I was greeted at the entrance to Kituwah by an immature red-tailed hawk perched in a small tree. I recorded three red-tails for the morning but suspect there were five. It’s hard to tell after an hour or so if you’re seeing a different hawk or the same one. But I know I saw two adults and at least one immature. I also had one immature red-shouldered hawk near the wetlands.

The railroad track at the entrance also provided one of my target sparrow species as I found three adult white-crowned sparrows. Next, I was treated to a splash of late autumn color when I found four brightly plumaged eastern meadowlarks – their lemon-yellow breasts shining in the morning sun against the short green grass they were foraging in.

Song sparrows were everywhere and field sparrows were fairly common but after nearly an hour I still hadn’t found any white-throated sparrows. When I finally found some white-throateds, I found two groups in proximity that probably had at least 50 birds between them. I didn’t investigate too long because a flash of rufous leaving the cornfields for a nearby woody tangle alerted me to the possibility of another target sparrow. Sure enough, I approached the tangle and pished and up popped three dapper fox sparrows. These large handsome sparrows are one of my favorite winter birds and Kituwah almost always provides a few. There was one other sparrow that I expected to find at Kituwah so I headed to the wetlands and slogged around, much to the chagrin of a great blue heron looking for a meal, in search of swamp sparrows. It was there I stumbled upon the rarest bird of the day. I saw a lot of sparrow activity in a brushy clump at the edge of the soggy area. As I approached to investigate I heard the distinctive, dry double chit or chat call of a sedge wren. I circled the clump about three times from as close as 10 feet, flushing at least a half-dozen song sparrows but never getting a look at the chatterer. I left it chattering and slogged on around the wetlands finally flushing three swamp sparrows.

I wound up with six species of sparrows – song, field, white-throated, white-crowned, fox and swamp and good looks at another one of my favorite winter birds the hermit thrush. The total count for a couple of hours at Kituwah was 36 species. Not a bad B-Friday and I didn’t have to stand in a single line.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Avid birder and burgeoning cyclist Lena Gallitano has come up with an ambitious plan to combine two of her passions. Gallitano will take part in Cycle North Carolina’s annual fall ride. This year’s trek will be a modest 500-mile affair from Elkin, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Outer Bank’s Corolla.

Now I don’t know if it was a lack of oxygen to the brain from all that pedaling or an endorphin induced “biker’s high” moment of revelation, but according to Gallitano the idea came to her during one of her training rides this past spring. “On the greenways in Raleigh this spring, I did a lot of birding by ear while riding my bike which made me think … is there a way I can turn this challenging adventure into something more worthwhile? The birds made my training rides more pleasurable and I’ve been a member of Audubon for many years so that’s when it clicked: I could make the ride a fundraiser called Bike for Birds,” recounted Gallitano.

Of course, for those who know Lena it comes as no surprise that birds were in her ears, on her mind and in her heart as she was cycling Raleigh’s greenways. The North Carolina native has a long history of working on behalf of her feathered friends. Gallitano is a long-time member and past president of Wake Audubon Society. She has served on the boards of Audubon North Carolina and the Carolina bird Club. As soon as she retired from North Carolina State University, where she worked for the Cooperative Extension Service, Gallitano focused much of her time and energy working on environmental, educational and conservation projects that benefit birds and other North Carolina wildlife by protecting and enhancing the wild places they need to survive and thrive.

That hard work was recognized in 2004, when she not only won Audubon North Carolina’s 2004 Volunteer of the Year award for her grassroots efforts in opposing the U.S. Navy’s plan for locating an outlying landing field adjacent to Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, but was also awarded the Governor’s Award as Wildlife Volunteer of the Year by the North Carolina Wildlife Federation for her work in helping to make the North Carolina Birding Trail a reality.

Did I say combining two of her passions? I meant combining three of her passions. Gallitano has also served on the board of N.C. Beautiful whose mission statement is: “To foster environmental stewardship through education and outreach to perpetuate the natural beauty of North Carolina.”

And there will be no shortage of natural beauty on this year’s Cycle N.C.’s fall ride. The tour will start in Elkin, where 1,000 or so riders will hit North Carolina’s scenic backroads for their trip to the coast. There will be stops at Autumn Creek Vineyards plus other venues in communities such as Mebane, Henderson, Rocky Mount, Manteo and Corolla. After all, there’s no rule that says you can’t have fun performing a good deed but remember, even through beautiful scenery 500 miles is still 500 miles.

If you want to support Lena, North Carolina’s varied bird life and/or Audubon North Carolina please contribute to her Bike for Birds fundraiser. You can mail your tax deductible donation to Audubon North Carolina, 123 Kingston Drive, Suite 206 Chapel Hill, NC 27514 please make your check out to Bike for Birds. There is also an online giving page at www.ncaudubon.org. Audubon North Carolina member and Bike for Birds supporter, Bon Parker has announced that she will match every $20 donation with her own $20 donation up to $1,000, so $20 will get you $40 – there’s a deal!

All donations will directly support the work of Audubon North Carolina, supporting its vital work of managing 19 coastal sanctuaries, monitoring 96 Important Bird Areas, protecting imperiled species like golden-winged warblers, cerulean warblers and the largest colony of beach-nesting least tern in North Carolina. Hope is a thing with wheels.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Migration is at full tilt across the region right now. In the passerine (songbird) department thrushes, grosbeaks and tanagers are joining in making those fallouts and mixed flocks even more exciting. And while the night skies have been busy for the last month (passerines migrate at night) some of the more notable diurnal migrants are beginning to show up across the region.

The most common diurnal migrant in the East is the broad-winged hawk. Nearly two million broad-wingeds nest in North America and overwinter in Central and South America. These chunky, crow-sized raptors and other larger-bodied birds such as eagles, ospreys, wood storks, cranes and pelicans utilize thermals and updrafts to aid them in their southerly journey. Hawk Watches along the broad-winged’s migration path, many of them setup and maintained by volunteers, help scientist monitor this species.

Caesar’s Head State Park, located on U.S. 276 in South Carolina, just south of Brevard, is probably the most notable Hawk Watch in the area. Nearly 10,000 broad-wings are reported annually from Caesar’s Head from mid-September till early October. As of Sept. 17 only 46 broad-wings had been recorded at Caesar’s Head, so if you have some free time between now and the first of October there are lots of birds still left to come through. The close-knit group of volunteers who keep a tab on broad-wings at Caesar’s Head call themselves the Wing Nuts. Wing Nuts are always happy to share with fellow birders and/or interested onlookers.

The mountain passes accessible along the Blue Ridge Parkway offer a myriad of opportunities to find migrating songbirds. While migrants may be found almost anywhere along the Parkway during migration there are some time-tested spots. Ridge Junction Overlook at the entrance to Mount Mitchell State Park at milepost 355.5 is one of those spots. This is a great place to spend a morning from now through the middle of October, and it’s easy migrant chasing – just bring a lawn chair and setup shop – the migrants will come to you. Some other notable spots to catch migrants on the Parkway include Craggy Gardens, Craggy Pinnacle, Walker Knob Overlook, Heintooga Ridge Road and Big Witch Gap.

A short trip to Rankin Bottoms in Cocke County, Tennessee, can provide some fine shorebird watching in the mountains. Shorebirding at Rankin Bottoms depends on the water level in Lake Douglas and each fall the Tennessee Valley Authority begins to draw down the lake leaving acres of exposed mudflats attracting weary migrants looking for a place to rest and refuel.

Some recent finds at Rankin bottoms include short-billed dowitcher, lesser yellowlegs, sanderlings, least, western, stilt and semipalmated sandpipers plus shovelers and blue-winged teal. To get to Rankin Bottoms from Waynesville, take I-40 west to exit 432 B. That will put you on U.S. 25/70. Follow U.S. 25 east out of Newport to Rankin Hill Road (I would estimate about five miles, but I have never measured it). Follow Rankin Hill Road to the railroad crossing. At the crossing take Hill Road to the left and follow it to the bottoms.

But even if you can’t sneak away to the Parkway or Caesar’s Head or Ranking Bottoms, you can find migrants by just being aware. As I sat down today (Sun. 9/18) to write this column, I noticed some movement in one of the dogwood trees out my window. I went outside to find a small flock of thrushes stuffing themselves with the bright red berries. In about half an hour from my deck and back yard I counted more than 20 species of birds. There were three different thrushes in the yard – Swainson’s, wood and gray-cheeked. I saw six different species of warblers — black-and-white, magnolia, worm-eating, hooded, black-throated blue and Tennessee. Rose-breasted grosbeaks, scarlet tanagers, gray catbirds and year-round residents like Carolina chickadee and tufted titmouse rounded out the list. Migration will soon be over till spring, but right now, there’s still time.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Cherokee students and teachers have undertaken the first part of a long-term monitoring project of birds at the Cowee Mound in Macon County.

A group with the Robbinsville-based Cherokee language camp in July participated in a breeding-bird sample survey at the tribally owned mound. Shirley Oswalt led the effort.

The event proved an opportunity for the students to familiarize themselves with native bird species, the traditional Cherokee names for these birds, and with the historic property itself.

Staff from Southern Appalachian Raptor Research, a local nonprofit group dedicated to the conservation and protection of birds of prey in the southern Appalachians through monitoring, education and field research, organized the survey. Mike LaVoie of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Fisheries and Wildlife Management program participated in the event, as did staff from the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee, which has been collaborating with the tribe on the management of the property.

The survey is part of a nationwide program known Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship that is coordinated by the Institute for Bird Populations to monitor the health of breeding birds throughout North America. Last year, the Raptor Research group established a monitoring station in southern Macon County, and is continuing that work this summer.

“We chose the Cowee Mound site due to its diverse mix of early successional habitat along the floodplain,” LaVoie said. “Such habitat has been disappearing throughout the Southeastern U.S., yet is critical for the survival of many of our native wildlife species.”

Cowee is considered one of the most significant archaeological sites of the Mississippian period in North Carolina, when intensive agriculture first became established in the region. Pollen sampling has verified the presence of agriculture on these bottomlands dating back at least 3,000 years. The mound is thought to date from approximately 600 A.D. The council house of the Cherokee town of Cowee was located on this mound in the 18th century, at which time the town of Cowee served as the principal diplomatic and commercial center of the mountain Cherokee. For this reason, Cowee was also the center of significant historic events on the eve of the American Revolution in the South, including the target of the Rutherford Expedition in September 1776.

The 70-acre tribal property along the Little Tennessee River encompasses Cowee Mound and Village Site, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The Eastern Band purchased the property in early 2007 with assistance from the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee and the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund. The latter holds a conservation easement on the property that permanently protects its conservation values and prevents commercial and residential development.

The Migratory Bird Act makes it illegal to kill barred owls, Strix varia. It is a crime that is punishable by thousands of dollars in fines and can include jail time. That is unless you are working for the federal government and you are killing barred owls in Western old growth forests in an attempt to save the endangered spotted owl, Strix occidentalis caurina. The just-released federal recovery plan for the northern spotted owl calls for killing hundreds, maybe thousands of healthy barred owls. This issue is contentious and intriguing on many levels.

The northern spotted owl, a shy, retiring resident of Pacific Northwest old growth forests, was catapulted into the limelight a couple of decades ago when it was listed on the Federal Endangered Species List and made the poster child for the efforts to curtail logging in those old growth forests. The debate was loud and long and rancorous. There was the spiking of timber (driving steel spikes into standing timber) by anti logging activists creating danger for loggers with chainsaws and sawmill operators. Loggers and their supporters countered with demonstrations that included caravans of log trucks and other timbering equipment. Expensive and time consuming suits and countersuits were filed by both sides. And the federal government, depending on the current (at the time) administration’s environmental proclivities, either supported and, perhaps, strengthened regulations protecting old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest or eased said regulations.  

Meanwhile, in the midst of pitched battles between the opposing sides, the northern spotted owl’s eastern cousin, the barred owl, began flexing its feathered muscles. The larger, more aggressive barred owl arrived in the Pacific Northwest in the mid 1960s and early 1970s and began flexing its feathered muscles. Barred owls out-compete and sometimes even attack northern spotted owls, usurping nesting habitat and displacing their smaller, western cousins.

Despite years of greatly curtailed logging, the northern spotted owl shows little sign of recovery. Focus is being shifted to the interactions between the barred and spotted owls. Robyn Thorson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Pacific Northwest’s director, called the barred owl, “… the biggest threat spotted owls are facing,” and, reluctantly, supports the culling of barred owls.

Now if barred owls were “exotic” — that is, if they had not reached the Pacific Northwest of their own volition — obliterating them with shoguns might be a lot easier to swallow. Surely, a lot of human-influenced factors like fire suppression and tree planting across the northern plains paved the way for barred owls, but still, they got there under their own power and for many, it’s just a question of natural selection.

In a scenario like this there is little doubt what the outcome would be. The barred owl is a generalist. It has a varied diet and nests successfully throughout a number of different habitats. The northern spotted owl, on the other hand is very selective regarding diet and nesting habitat. Add its aggressive nature – and it’s pretty easy to see that without help the spotted owl’s days are numbered.

When you throw politics into the mix, it becomes a real circus. Timbering proponents are ecstatic. They are pointing fingers and saying – “see, it wasn’t us, it was the barred owl all along, now let us go and cut trees again” never mind that the cutting decimated 60 to 80 percent of the northern spotted owl’s habitat already, severely restricting them while enhancing barred owl habitat. And there are a lot of people and organizations with a lot of vested time and monies tied up in the rescue of the spotted owl willing to try anything to keep their poster child from fading into the sunset.

I will admit to being somewhat ambivalent, but when I simply look at the biology — killing barred owls will never work unless you plan on killing large numbers of them for the better part of a century or longer, until enough old growth is created to give the northern spotted owl some sort of buffer.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

I’ve always been interested in the processes by which we discover things. Being a naturalist, I’m most interested in the processes by which entities like birds, plants, special places, etc., are located.

I’m a firm believer that preparation generally pays off. That is, if you study up on something — say a bird — and anticipate where you might locate it, your chances are considerably enhanced that you will encounter it. Last year, for instance, I spotted my first-ever Swainson’s warbler in this manner.

Wanting very much to see one, I read the literature regarding the bird’s range distribution. The nearest place where they have commonly been encountered in North America during the breeding season is the headwaters region of the Chattooga River. That was handy enough. Before driving down the Bull Pen Road southeast of Highlands, I studied the bird’s image in several field guides and listened to its call notes and song on tapes.

My first stop was at a pullover above the old Iron Bridge that overlooked a rhododendron thicket, their preferred habitat in the Southern Applachians. After about 45 seconds, I heard a bird singing. Could it be? Yep, it could. I trained my binoculars on the singing bird and there was a Swainson’s warbler, considered by many to one of the most elusive and reclusive birds.

I also think one can almost “will” things into existence. That is, if you want to find something badly enough, you probably can. I have located many very rare plants by putting on my blinders and looking for and thinking about nothing else. Sometimes it takes months, but I’ve never come up empty-handed. If it’s out there, I believe you can locate it if you really and truly want to do so.

And then there is what I think of as my “blunder method.” That is, you simply go out and see what you happen to stumble upon my pure blind luck. Sort of like the proverbial blind pig that stumbles upon an ear of corn now and again. I employed this method last week while camping at the Evins State Park just off the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau northwest of Smithville, Tenn.

On Thursday morning I picked a trail and went out with no particular objective in mind except to observe the extensive stands of Goldie’s and glade ferns reputed to be distributed along the first half mile or so of the trail. After passing through the ferns, I followed the trail down a steep ravine to Center Hill Lake.  

It started to get hot and buggy. I was thirsty and hadn’t brought any water. This is the point at which one either returns to the campsite or pushes on to see just what can be blundered upon. I pushed on and somehow got off the established trail. Not wanting to backtrack, I decided to hump it up the ridge in the general direction of where I’d parked my truck. The ridge slope was really steep; so much so, that I had to stop and rest every few minutes.  

“Well now,” I thought to myself, “this is going to be really good. No telling what I’ll find having gotten lost and ending up climbing the side of a mountain.”

Sure enough, just as I reached a road near my truck, I saw chestnut husks littering the ground. Looking up, there in full bloom was an American chestnut tree. I examined the leaves to make sure it wasn’t one of the disease-resistant foreign species that might have become naturalized at the park. Nope, it was the genuine article.

I have seen American chestnut trees flowering and fruiting at several places here in Smokies region, most notably near Wayah Bald above Franklin. But all of those were small and obviously already blighted by the fungus first introduced to America about 1910 in New York City.

This tree showed absolutely no signs of blight. The bark was firm without any of the fissures that indicate infestation. The leaves were bright and glossy. And it was covered with snowy-cream, spike-like flowers.

Later on, I roughly measured the tree. At breast height, it was nearly 60 inches in circumference and about 18 inches in diameter. I’d estimate it stood over 50 feet in height, and it displayed a nice wide canopy spread in spite of being crowed by several adjacent trees. What a sight!   

Carl Halfacre, the manager of Evins State Park, was just as excited as I was to learn about such a tree on the park’s grounds. Along with cerulean warblers recently discovered breeding there, this wonderful tree will no doubt become one of the park’s claims to fame. Many people would travel a goodly distance just to see a healthy American chestnut in full flower.

I did, however, fail to mention to Ranger Halfacre that I’d been employing my “blunder method” of exploration to make the discovery.

Editor’s note: This Back Then column by George Ellison was first published in July 2003.

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..

Too many birders hang their binoculars up and put their field guides back on the shelf after May, fearing the “dog” days of summer. But the summer months offer a great opportunity to get to know your local nesters. While it’s true that rising thermometers, incubation and chick-rearing duties quiet and/or shorten the morning chorus, early morning still offers a great deal of avian activity. And here in Western North Carolina  we’re fortunate to have the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Cherohala Skyway, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and other avenues to race those rising temperatures up the mountains and prolong those good birding opportunities.

Last Saturday (June 18) I had the pleasure of leading a field trip for the Great Smoky Mountains Audubon Chapter to look for local nesters. The disparate elevations across WNC not only allow you to chase cooler temperatures they also provide different birding opportunities.

We started out last Saturday at Kituwah along the Tuckasegee River in Swain County. The area, formerly known as Ferguson’s Field, is home to the Kituwah mound and revered by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians as the “mother town.” The EBCI purchased the mound and 309 surrounding acres in 1996 to preserve the site. Tribal members farm small plots on the site. Kituwah is open to the public from sunup to sundown and birders are welcome. Kituwah’s open areas and brushy fence row habitat offers a chance to view different birds than one would encounter along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The purple martin colony, near the entrance to Kituwah was busy when we arrived Saturday morning. Tree swallows, barn swallows and chimney swifts joined the martins in the sky chasing insects. We also got a brief glimpse of a blue grosbeak along the railroad track near the entrance.

We started out along the railroad tracks and were shortly greeted by the “fitz bew” of a willow flycatcher. The wet brushy habitat at Kituwah is ideal for these little flycatchers. A pair of noisy, curious blue-gray gnatcatchers also greeted us along the tracks.

We were observing eastern bluebirds and listening to yellow-breasted chats and common yellowthroats near an old barn along the tracks when the sky suddenly filled with barn swallows.

A glance up showed the reason for all the excitement as the swallows escorted a male Cooper’s hawk out of their territory.

We never did get looks at a chat, although we heard at least three. Another noisy brush-denizen that sang and sang for us while remaining hidden was a white-eyed vireo.

We did, however, luck out on another Kituwah resident. We were skirting a cornfield along a turn row, when a short burst of song stopped us. An orchard oriole popped up into the top of a small tree and gave us great looks – singing all the time.

We were beginning to work up a sweat at Kituwah so we abandoned the lowlands for the coolness of the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a little after 11 a.m. when we stopped at the Big Witch Overlook for lunch. As we were sitting in the cool shade, first a black-throated blue warbler, then a chestnut-sided warbler came over to check us out. At Jenkins Ridge we were serenaded by a brown creeper but never got looks at the little tree hugger. We did get great views of a Canada Warbler and a pair of common ravens, though.

Darkening skies spurred us on along the Parkway to Heintooga Ridge Road. We picked up a ruffed grouse with at least one fledgling and a pair of hen turkeys with a whole herd of polts along Heintooga. At the Balsam picnic area, at the end of Heintooga road we heard golden-crowned kinglets and saw red-breasted nuthatches.

The rain overtook us and we headed back to Waynesville with around 60 species. Not bad for the “dog” days of summer.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)