ake J eagle

Not a winter has passed in the last four years or so that a bald eagle — mature, immature or both — has not been sighted at Lake Junaluska. Usually they’re here today and gone tomorrow, but this winter a visitor has lingered.

A mature bald eagle has been hanging around Lake Junaluska for about a month. Last I heard — last week — it was still there. I believe the drawdown of the lake probably accounts for this bird’s decision to linger.

Eagles around the world are divided into four general groups — fish eagles, harpy or buteonine eagles, true eagles or booted eagles (the golden eagle is in this group) and snake or serpent eagles. The bald eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, is a fish eagle.

A large portion of the bald eagle’s diet, as the name implies, is fish. Another bald eagle staple, especially here in the south in the winter where they tend to congregate in large numbers, is the coot — you know, that gangly dark bird that looks (acts) like a cross between a chicken and a duck, found around the lake in the winter. I believe the drawdown concentrated both of those food sources in small areas making a meal a little easier to come by.

There are two recognized subspecies of bald eagles — northern, Haliaeetus leucocephalus alascanus, and southern, Haliaeetus leucocephalus leucocephalus. The southern bald eagle is a smaller bird and I believe the bird at Lake Junaluska is a southern. Now, bald eagles like most raptors exhibit a “reversed” sexual dimorphism, meaning the female is larger than the male. In some cases, the size difference between a female southern bald eagle and a male northern bald eagle can be minimal, and since southern bald eagles have been found in Canada and northern bald eagles have been found in Mexico, the “southern” moniker is just a guess.

Redefining success

Protection of the bald eagle actually precedes the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The Bald Eagle Protection Act was passed in 1940 and the bald eagle was officially listed as endangered in 1967 under the Endangered Species Act of 1967, the predecessor of the current Endangered Species Act.

There was much fanfare in 2007 when the bald eagle was officially removed from the ESA. The big whoop-de-do at the Jefferson Memorial noted the 40-year, 25-fold increase in nesting pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states to an astounding 10,000 pairs. Today it is estimated that there are between 70,000 and 80,000 bald eagles in North America.

Before our forefathers arrived here and cleaned up the desolate old growth forests with their clean air and pristine water to create the urban utopia we know today, more than half a million bald eagles lived in North America.

To restore that population to roughly 15 percent of its former status is a rousing success?

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

Snow Day!

Enough already with the “Enough already!” I know it’s snowing again. Yep school is closed again. I’ve got an idea — call in well.

To paraphrase Blowing Rock’s mountaintop yogi, Tom Robbins, from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, it would go like this.

“Hi, I haven’t missed a day in three years. It’s a terrible malaise. I’ve come to think that work is all there is. But it’s snowing and there’s no school and my kids are well and I am well and I won’t be in today.”

Now prepare some hot oatmeal. Don’t scrimp on the brown sugar, butter or cinnamon, and if you’re adventurous drizzle a little honey over it. Let the kids pick out their favorite movie and cozy them up in front of the TV.

Now you’ve got 45 minutes or so to get busy. Make a plan. Go ahead and start the hot chocolate. You’ll want it after you come in from your romp in the snow.

If you’ve got a mudroom, great, if not designate an area near one of your doors. We have a great quilt rack that we drag out of our bedroom and put near the kitchen door. It’s great for hanging wet snow clothes on. Oh, and you’ll need extra mats (bathmats) or doormats for the boots.

If you’ve got a fireplace that’s cool, get the troops to help you start a roaring fire. With someone to wad up newspaper and someone to pass kindling and help drag the logs over, a five-minute chore can easily turn into a rousing half-hour “perfect-fire” building seminar.

And you know, while you’ve got em there hypnotized by the flames it’s a great time to whip out Dr. Seuss, or Junie B. Jones or even Tuck Everlasting, get some comfy pillows and read a bit.

Lunch can be leftovers, lunch can be soup, lunch can be PB&J or apples and peanut butter or carrots and dip — something quick and informal. Remember it’s a snow day, we’re flexible today, we’re improvising today and we’re watching through our children’s eyes.

You’ll get outside. It doesn’t matter if it’s before lunch or after lunch. Now you’re outside. This is a critical time. This could be the biggest challenge of your day. You have one charge now and it is diametrically opposed to every parental fiber in your body. What you do now is LISTEN.

“So you don’t want to sled on your $200 Eurosled snowblazer? You want to sit in the snow and throw fistfuls up in the air, OK.

“How about now? Oh, you just want to chase the dog around the yard ...”

Go with it. It’s a snow day and you’re well, remember. And don’t be surprised, if you let em go full tilt for 45 minutes or so then remind them that the hot chocolate is already waiting, it could be time to go inside while there is still some feeling in your toes.

And, with a tummy full of warm hot chocolate, some graham crackers and peanut butter and another “most favorite movie in the whole wide world” cued up, they may not even notice when you slink away and crawl stealthily under the covers.

Which takes us, once again to Yogi Tom, “There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.” – Tom Robbins.

Snow day! Yum!

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

On the road to recovery

Friends of the Western North Carolina Nature Center unveils its New Winter Speaker Series on native animals at the Folk Art Center at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 6. Asheville native Warren Parker, retired chief Endangered Species Biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Service’s first national director of the Red Wolf Species Survival program, will talk about the nuts and bolts of this reintroductory program.

The program, “The Red Wolf Survives” is free to members of Friends of the WNC Nature Center. A $5 contribution to Friends is suggested at the door for non-members. The Folk Art Center is located at mile marker 382 on the Blue Ridge Parkway in east Asheville. Please RSVP to Friends executive director Sarah Oram by February 5 at 828.298.5600 ext. 308 or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your name and the number in your party.

If there ever was a “friend in need,” Canis lupus, was (is) one. Before widespread settlement, this iconic top-of-the-food-chain predator was abundant in southern bottomland hardwood forests from the Atlantic Seaboard to central Texas and Oklahoma, northward to the Ohio River Valley. By the 1970s, because of human encroachment and persecution, the red wolf had been extirpated from all of its former range, save the bayous, cheniers and marshes of southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana.

The passage of the Endangered Species Act in December of 1973 gave the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service the leverage and clout to act. Parker, as chief endangered species biologist, helped orchestrate an audacious and ambitious recovery plan that called for trapping wild red wolves for a captive breeding program.

North Carolina has figured prominently in this program. A reintroductory program at Alligator River National wildlife Refuge was begun in 1987. This successful program has spilled over to other refuges and public lands in northeastern North Carolina and today between 100 and 120 red wolves — the only population of wild red wolves in the world — call North Carolina home.

The WNC Nature Center is one of only 40 captive red wolf breeding sites in the country. On Cinco de Mayo (May 5, 2009,) a red wolf pup, appropriately named Mayo, was born to Rufus and Angel, two Louisiana red wolves on loan to WNC Nature Center from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Mayo will remain at the nature center and continue to be a part of the captive breeding pool of red wolves.

This is sure to be a fascinating program about a fascinating animal by one who helped formulate and implement this groundbreaking protocol.

And the dam - came tumblin’ tumblin’

The Dillsboro Dam story is as twisted and convoluted as the Tuck itself. You had Jackson County commissioners who made property rights one of the underpinnings of their election campaigns voting in favor of eminent domain to wrest the dam out of Duke’s hands. You had one recently elected commissioner trying to get the county to drop its lawsuit, who, while a member of another county board, said Duke wasn’t doing nearly enough and that if they didn’t do more, lawsuits would be filed.

Current Jackson County Chairman Brian McMahan called the Tuckasegee River Cooperative Stakeholder process flawed and commissioner Joe Cowan called it a farce. Both are right and wrong to some extent. The process was flawed to the exact extent that stakeholders did not come informed and prepared to play hardball with Duke.

The process was never a farce. Duke was using all angles and all available resources to get the best relicensing agreement it could get. Agencies like U.S. Fish and Wildlife, North Carolina Division of Water Quality, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and other agencies that have actual relicensing authority were there to let Duke know they had concerns. In a traditional relicensing process, these entities and Duke would have been locked behind closed door until time for public comment.

Cowan was also quoted in the Sylva Herald as saying, “... I know they’re [Duke] in cahoots with the whitewater people ...” I imagine this is reference to some of the concessions garnered by American Whitewater through the stakeholders’ process.

American Whitewater was the one stakeholder group, with no licensing authority, who had done their homework and had a game plan and was dedicated to it. And they received concessions from Duke. Sadly the county and other participants were not so well prepared.

And remember, any and all stakeholders could have and should have come armed to the teeth. The worst that could have happened would have been for them to be asked to leave the stakeholder meetings. In which case they would’ve had the avenue to become interveners, as Jackson County and others did as the FERC process moved forward. But all that is water over the dam, so to speak.

The dam is coming down, so what does that mean for the river? According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, there are 11 species of fish found in the nearly mile-long impounded reservoir behind the dam. The stretch of river immediately below the dam has 38 species of fish. The river above the impounded reservoir has 24 species of fish.

The federally endangered elktoe mussel is found below the impoundment and above it. Removal of the dam will help reconnect these populations and expand the overall range of this endangered animal. The imperiled sicklefin redhorse is also found below the dam and removal of the dam will allow the sicklefin to extend its range upriver. A U.S. Fish & Wildlife report states, “Restoring the reservoir to a free-flowing river will make this portion of the river usable to a suite of native fish and other aquatic animals,” and that’s good news.

The Sylva Herald report noted a “conciliatory” tone among commissioners with reference to Duke and the dam. It’s worth a try. With adequate funding, the land alongside the river in Dillsboro could make a beautiful riverside park. And maybe they could talk Duke into dropping a couple of giant boulders in the river there so T.J. Walker’s Dillsboro Inn could enjoy the nice rippling sound of the river without having to view the debris atop the dam.

And let me say that I totally concur with Cowan and other Duke dissers that say Duke is not doing all it could or should. But sadly it’s a sign of the times. Cowan mentioned that Duke was not being a “good corporate neighbor.” I submit that, in these socio-economic times, good corporate neighbor is an oxymoron.

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

And then there were none

Atlee Yoder’s purple martin houses are in storage, out of the raw Ohio weather, awaiting spring and the first scout of the new season. But herein lies the rub — Yoder’s houses did not come down until last week.

Yoder, an Amish farmer from Apple Creek in the heart of Ohio’s Amish Country is, like many of his Amish neighbors who eschew most of our modern contrivances and conveniences, quite partial to these organic bug zappers.

Last August just as Yoder’s breeding colony was departing for the balmy climes of South America, a female martin with a late fledgling showed up at his houses. Being neighborly, Yoder left his houses up and the birds stayed — and stayed. September passed, then October and finally in November the fledgling disappeared. But the adult female lingered.

According to posts from the Purple Martin Conservation Association’s Web site forum and their Facebook site and from Ohio birds listserv, the female martin stayed until Jan. 10, 2010. Reports say that Yoder fed the bird on Jan. 10 by tossing mealworms into the air for her to catch as he had been doing for the last month or so. According to those reports the bird appeared healthy at that time, but failed to reappear the next day, or the next and thus appeared to have flown the coop.

And now for the official disclaimer — a purple martin overwintering anywhere in the U.S. should be big news for birders in general and the ornithological community in particular, yet documentation of this bird is sparse and sometimes contradictory. I have no reason to doubt Su Snyder’s (a member of the Greater Mohican Audubon Society) photo, which she so graciously provided for this story but other pieces of the story are puzzling.

According to the Ohio listserv the bird was supposedly reported on the Wilmot, Ohio, Christmas Bird Count. But when I go to Audubon’s Web site and pull up that particular CBC there is no mention of a purple martin. But then the bird is mentioned in a Dec. 22, 2009, Ohio statewide “rare bird alert.”

I have emailed a member of the Ohio Birds Record Committee, the Ohio Ornithological Society and the compiler of the Wilmot CBC but to date have received no replies. I imagine these people are being cautious and working to cross all “t”s and dot all “i”s before commenting in public. There might be questions of the birds’ origin i.e. were they captive reared?

Hopefully, this will be sorted out and I will be able to update you on this seemingly “first ever U.S. overwintering purple martin.” In the meantime if you’re interested in purple martins check out the Purple Martin Conservation Association’s website at purplemartin.org or their Facebook site.

At least it’s not an ivory-billed woodpecker, right?

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

It was one of those rare winter mornings when Haywood County Schools were on a two-hour delay. Izzy, my second-grader, and I dropped her sister, Maddy, at First Methodist’s outstanding daycare center, blasted by Smoky Mountain Coffee Roasters, grabbed a cuppa joe for me and a cuppa jack (hot chocolate) for her and struck out for Walker in the Hills and the nether reaches of Old Fiddle Road to feed Thomas the cat.

It was mostly clear and sunny, a few high clouds here and there and cold, around 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Looking up from The Great Smoky Mountains Expressway, the trees on the mountaintops looked like they had been flocked. They were just gleaming white. I thought it was rime.

But as we ascended Old Fiddle Road we began to notice little twinkling in the air like fairy dust in a Disney movie. By the time we reached the end of state maintenance on Old Fiddle, the twinkling had turned to sparkling flakes, slowly falling through the air, reflecting the sunlight like tiny mirrors.

I hesitated to call the flakes snow because they were clear (at least translucent). But they were large and definitely crystalline. The ones touching down on the windshield when we stopped at Thomas’ house were one-fourth to one-half inch in diameter. These crystals were flocking the trees and the mountaintops.

I don’t know who exclaimed, “Wow! Cool!” first, Izzy or me. But Izzy had the best description. She said it was like we were trapped in a snow globe and someone was shaking it.

The flakes bugged me because all the snow I had ever seen was white. So I did an Internet search and found “diamond dust.”

The best description I found – though a little technical and some European spelling was from “The Weather Doctor” at http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/ddust.htm.

Here are some excerpts:

“... At very cold temperatures, 40 degrees below zero (C or F) and colder, snow can actually fall out of the cleanest, clearest blue sky without intervening clouds. Temperatures need not be so cold if there is dust, or other minute particles, in the air on which the water vapour may deposit. When condensation nuclei are present, diamond dust may form at temperatures just below minus 20 degrees C (0 degrees Fahrenheit). At such temperatures, the water vapour in the air spontaneously forms ice crystals which slowly settle earthward. When these falling crystals are caught in the light, they sparkle like gemstones, a weather condition known appropriately enough as diamond dust.

“... At such low temperature, ice crystals form as irregular hexagonal plates, or as unbranched ice needles or ice columns directly from water vapour in the air. The formation of hexagonal-plate crystals is favoured at air temperatures from minus 10 degrees C to minus 20 degrees C (14 degrees F to minus 4 degrees F). Ice plates resemble dinner plates with a hexagonal pattern in their long dimension and are thin relative to their width. Ice columns, on the other hand, look like minute stubby pencils. Columns typically form in temperatures below minus 25 degrees C (minus 13 degrees F). They are long in comparison to their hexagonal cross-section. Larger column crystals fall with their long axis paralleling the ground, but at times, the falling columns may rotate like slow, miniature helicopter blades.”

It was definitely the hexagonal-plate crystal that Izzy and I observed at Thomas’ house the other morning.

Another great Web site for looking at snow crystals is Mark Cassino’s Snowflake gallery at http://www.markcassino.com/newsite/portfolios/snow/index.htm.

Happy winter-weather watching!

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

Birrrrrding the big chill

The annual Balsam Christmas Bird Count was scheduled for last Saturday (Jan. 2). However, scary weather conditions — snow, high winds and temperatures in the low teens — especially in the northern count area, caused the count to be canceled.

My birding partner, Bobby Wood, had already made the trip over from Stecoah and I had been up for a couple of hours trying to rouse some owls before we received the news. The truck was loaded and we were in birding mode so we decided to enjoy Mother Nature’s cool offering and kick around the count circle for a while on our own.

We decided to start our morning at Lake Junaluska. The closer we got to the lake, the harder the snow was falling. The roads had a light dusting that rose and swirled at the beckoning of the north wind.

We glassed the back of the lake from the pull-off along U.S. 19. A few coots were present along with some Lake J mallards, a couple of ruddy ducks, some of the feral Canada geese and some hooded mergansers. We flushed a great blue heron from the tall grasses along the wetlands, at our second stop. We watched through our binoculars as the big blue-gray bird launched with deliberate wing beats and cut a swath through the falling snow as it lumbered across the lake.

The lake was productive, as usual, providing 14 species of gulls and waterfowl. The best finds were a lone canvasback that’s been hanging out at the lake for a while, a horned grebe and a pair of lesser scaup. Of course the colorful hooded mergansers and dapper buffleheads are always a treat to see. Plus it seemed uniquely apropos to watch ducks bobbing in the snow on a Christmas count.

We left Lake Junaluska for the Waynesville watershed. The windswept reservoir was the antithesis of Lake J, not a bird to be seen. We cruised the roads around the watershed where we found hermit thrush, white-crowned sparrow, golden-crowned kinglet, hairy woodpecker and red-breasted nuthatch among others. The winter wonderland mystique was reinforced in the watershed as we stood in a small clearing, drenched in sunlight, looking past the occasional snowflake at the dazzling white peaks above us.

We made a few other stops before wrapping up between 1:30 and 2 p.m. We wound up with a respectable winter’s morn birding total of 44 species.

While the official count was canceled this year, I want to thank the town of Waynesville and local farmer Jim Francis for once again supporting the Christmas Bird Count by allowing access to their properties. We’ll see you guys again next year.

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

2010-to be continued

Will 150-foot long fiberglass wands magically spin electricity from mountaintop zephyrs across Western North Carolina in the near future? The issue of industrial-sized wind turbines along the ridgetops of Western North Carolina is sure to blow up again when the General Assembly reconvenes in May.

District 57 Rep. Pricey Harrison has vowed to reintroduce legislation promoting the pursuit of large-scale wind power production along the ridgetops of WNC after Senate Bill 1068, amended to discourage such production, passed the Senate and House last August. Sen. Joe Sam Queen, newly elected President Pro Tem Martin Nesbitt, and other mountain senators appear committed to the bill in its new form and dedicated to preserving what they feel is the intent and language of North Carolina’s Mountain Ridge Protection Act.

Opponents of industrial-sized wind farms across the mountains of Southern Appalachia may have a new bat in their arsenal. On Dec. 9, 2009, U.S. District Judge Roger Titus granted an injunction stopping construction of a wind farm in West Virginia, noting that the developer, Beech Ridge Energy LLC, should have sought an Incidental Take Permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because their project was likely to kill federally endangered Indiana bats.

•••

And speaking of bats, biologists and scientists across the Smokies fear the winter of 2009-2010 will be the winter white-nose syndrome shows up in the Smokies. White-nose syndrome, named for the white fungus that appears around the muzzle of infected animals, was first documented from Schoharie Cavern, near Albany, N.Y., in 2007. The disease has spread rapidly and is moving south. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Virginia have been added to the list of states reporting white-nose syndrome bringing the total to nine states. More than a million bats, including 25,000 endangered Indiana bats have succumbed to white-nose syndrome and biologists believe the jump from Virginia to Tennessee and/or North Carolina is inevitable.

•••

It’s been a long and winding road from “nowhere” to a cash settlement. But does a paltry $12.8 million settle anything. The money, buried deep in this year’s omnibus spending bill was secured by former Swain County resident Congressman Heath Shuler. Swain County residents seeking a cash settlement had arrived at a more substantial $52 million settlement figure. Shuler calls the $12.8 million a “down payment” and promises to keep working for a more equitable settlement. In a county basically bereft of property tax revenue (over 85 percent of the land in the county is federally owned), it seems only fair the Feds should pony up a little more. I hope Shuler shows the same kind of conviction and courage he did standing behind Mike Ditka’s porous offensive line for the New Orleans Saints.

Everything old is new again – happy (old) new year!

One less whooper

Cayuga, Ind. – Wildlife Officials announce arrest.

Enforcement agents for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources have announced the arrest of a suspect in the recent shooting of a federally endangered whooping crane.

USF&W agent D. Doright told reporters, “This big hairy dufous just walked into our command center and said, ‘I want my bird back.’”

Wildlife and Fisheries along with Indiana DNR had set up a command center in rural Indiana, near Cayuga (pronounced REDDDNECKKK) after the discovery, Dec. 1, of the body of crane #217. One of only 500 whoopers left in the world.

The alleged perpetrator, Sas Quatch, a large, hairy, humanoid, said by locals to live in, “a large, manmade burrow” near the Chew Lake Dam turned himself in to authorities Wednesday, Dec. 16.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” Quatch said. “There’re at least 500 of those big squawkers out there, which is amazing considering the way you bare-ones have mucked the place up. That’s more than double the number of all of my tribe.”

When officer Doright asked Quatch why he left the scene of the crime, Quatch replied, “ Duuhhh! The squawker had a transmitter on ‘im. That means one of you tweebs ain’t far behind.”

“Did you know it was a, uh, squawker, when you shot it?” Doright asked.

“Jeezz man! Look at it! It’s a friggin five-foot tall white bird. Whadddaa you think it is?” replied Quatch.

“Why did you shoot it?” asked Doright.

“Ta eat, ya hillbilly,” Quatch said.

“Why did you want to eat a whoo – I mean, squawker?”

“Well, I got an email from a cousin out in Texas. He said he understood a flock of squawkers had been established out here and that I had to try one. He said they tasted like ivory-bills and as big as they were, you’d have leftovers for a week.”

“You eat ivory-bills?!!”

“Man, I’m not talking to you anymore. My lawyer is on the way. What are you looking at? Oh, sure, cavemen can do commercials but I can’t have a lawyer?”

Quatch refused further comment but Scuzz Howe of the law firm Dewey, Stickum and Howe read a short statement.

“Our client, Mr. S. Quatch was clearly within his rights as an aboriginal hunter to take this animal for sustenance. Sadly, at this point in time, in our society, it’s not like Mr. Quatch could walk into a supermarket and buy a turkey.”

“If the stomach growls, you gotta prowl,” Howe said.

Junaluska waterfowl are plentiful, varied

A quick turn around Lake Junaluska last Sunday revealed 13 species of waterfowl and/or wetland birds. This tiny (200-acre) clear dot nestled at 2,500 feet in the highest county east of the Mississippi River must call out to migrants seeking passage through the mountains. It will consistently turn up a dozen or more species of waterfowl from now through early spring.

The trip also pointed out how quickly birders, like myself, become jaded. That Sunday I was commiserating with a couple of other regular Junaluska birders about how “not much was going on at the lake,” that morning. But when I looked at the list a little more objectively, I realized it was a pretty diverse list. It included belted kingfisher, American coot, pied-billed grebe, double-crested cormorant, ring-billed gull, bufflehead, hooded merganser, lesser scaup and others.

I remembered having seen some postings from Stephan Pagans, a birder I know from Monroe, La., on the Birdmail listserv. The postings were from a couple of surveys along a large impoundment, D’Arbonne Lake, in north-central Louisiana. When I combined the waterfowl and wetland species from Pagans’ two stops, I tallied 11 species. Nine of the 11 were present at lake Junaluska last Sunday. The two species Pagans had that were not at Junaluska were gadwall and great egret. Both species have been recorded at Junaluska and gadwalls will be present sometime between now and spring.

That little bit of species sleuthing led me to refer to another list. I have a list of birds from Lake Junaluska prepared a few years back by Jonathan Mays before he left the area for the Great North Woods of Maine. That list, which may not even be current now, has 68 species of waterfowl, waders and kingfishers from this tiny mountain lake.

The list, which was years in the making, includes a number of rarities/oddities for a small inland lake including brown and white pelican, Ross’s goose, cackling goose, surf scoter, white-winged scoter, black scoter, willet, laughing gull, Sabine’s gull and Caspian, common, Forster’s and black tern.

The waterfowl at Junaluska will ebb and flow as fronts come and go this winter. One day in December of 2000 turned up more than 500 different waterfowl and waders composed of at least 20 different species. So if you start jonesing for waterfowl this winter before you pack the car and head for the coast, take a drive around Junaluska, you might be pleasantly surprised.