Dwayne Martin loves birds, loves learning about birds and loves educating about birds.

It’s time once again for the Granddaddy of bird counts. Audubon’s 107th annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC) takes place between December 14 and January 5.

For a bunch of “little ole ladies in tennis shoes,” birders are a hardy lot. Gone is the green of spring and summer, and with it go the scarlet of tanagers, the indigo of buntings, the blue of grosbeaks and the rainbow of multicolored warblers. With us are the browns and grays of winter and the sparrows.

When I was a full-time staff writer at the Smoky Mountain News, I spent a lot of time covering the North Shore Road controversy.

“Dance with the one that brung ‘ya” is an old Texas mantra, and Texas oilman George W. Bush has filled the Beltway with dancing partners over the last six years.

The Texas two-step continues.

Once again,science and scientists go head to head with the forces of nature to see who can best predict the coming winter in the North Carolina mountains.

When my wife came home the other evening, she asked if I had heard about the toad-sucking dog on NPR.

Anyone who follows the Naturalist’s Corner knows that I have devoted much ink to the birds one might encounter at Lake Junaluska and its environs since I began the column back in 1996.

A couple of Sundays ago Bob Olthoff, Blair Ogburn (senior naturalist at Balsam Mountain Preserve) and I were at Balsam Mountain searching through a mixed flock of migrants, looking for any newcomers when we heard someone kickstart a motorcycle in the woods behind us.

Ornithologists Geoff Hill of Auburn University and Dan Mennill from University of Windsor presented a program at this year’s American Ornithological Union’s meeting in Veracruz, Mexico on Oct. 4, regarding their claims of the presence of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Florida.