I am sure I’m not the only one hoping the Lake Junaluska eagles are successful this nesting season. It seems, by all appearances, we should have an answer in just a few short weeks.

St. Croix’s adolescent hormones were coursing through his lean muscular body when the urge to leave the Black Hills of South Dakota became too strong to ignore. He set out, on foot, on an easterly trek in the fall of 2009 with no particular destination in mind.

I believe it was around Jan. 22 of this year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the eastern cougar officially extinct. I’m surprised there’s barely been a ripple regarding the notice and the removal of the eastern cougar from the endangered species list. But I have an idea why — and since I’ve invested no real sleuthing time to date, I assure you I could be wrong. I will try and lay it out in simple terms here and do a bit of that sleuthing before reporting back on Feb. 27.

It appears the eagles that nested unsuccessfully last year at Lake Junaluska are back for another go at it. There have been reports of a pair doing a bit of remodeling at the nest and a pair (presumably the same one) has been seen interacting at the nest and in flight — both good signs of pair bonding.

Jan. 4, 2019 was a dreary day. It was more than that; it was a dreary Balsam Christmas Bird Count day. We have generally, since its inception 17 years ago, scheduled our Balsam CBC during the last count weekend. We did so because we have section leaders and others who also participate in other established area counts. Audubon’s count period ended on Jan. 4 this year so we didn’t really have a weather makeup date, besides most CBCs run rain or shine on the appointed date.

Birding buddy and former subcontractor for my Forest Service point-count survey, Kirk Gardner, was in town for the holidays and managed to cobble together a group of birding buddies for a bit of birding. 

I don’t know if our recent ancestors were better weather readers than we, or if they simply knew, by late November, they should be prepared for winter. Nowadays we wait for forecasts from meteorologists, and likely rely on a little intuition as well. But by Thursday (Dec. 6) last week almost everyone was onboard with the idea North Carolina was dead in the sights of a major winter storm.

Those radical environmentalists and their aiding and abetting scientists are finally called out. 

After the deadliest wildfire in history — the Camp Fire in California, which killed at least 85 people — our climate-denier-in-chief’s Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, after declaring that this was not the time for finger pointing went on to tell Brietbart News, “I will lay this on the foot of those environmental radicals that have prevented us from managing the forests for years. And you know what? This is on them.”

Lake Junaluska is an amazing resource. It is home to the Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center, the World Methodist Council and Intentional Growth Center and attracts visitors and guests from all around the world. Area residents flock to the wonderful walking trail for a little exercise and/or to simply enjoy the beauty. It is becoming a regular haunt for photographers. And the new boat landing has provided more access for fishermen.

It wasn’t long after we crossed the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, headed west into Louisiana, that we began to see the occasional just-picked field of cotton. We exited I-20 at Rayville, Louisiana, and hit the two-lane highways of my youth into Morehouse Parish where I grew up in the tiny farming village of Mer Rouge. Along the way we saw more recently harvested cotton fields, many with rectangular plastic-wrapped modules of cotton sitting in the turnrows.