Birds

From mid-December through early-January, tens of thousands of citizen scientists across the Americas will participate in an Audubon Christmas Bird Count. This wildlife census effort began in 1900 as an alternative to the traditional Christmas “Side Hunt,” a competition that entailed killing as many birds and mammals as possible. The only formal count in the […]

The song sparrow was tangled in a mist net stretched between a stand of big bluestem and a blackberry thicket. It flapped and flailed, but settled a bit as Alicia Bachman’s nimble fingers worked to extract it – first the tiny claws and legs, then the wings and finally the head. A volunteer and experienced […]

We feed them in our backyards, thrill to their springtime calls and watch with wonder as they flock in the fall. But for scientists, the birds of the Piedmont Carolinas also serve as messengers of the health of the region and as evidence of changes in the landscape. Now, for the first time, a mostly […]

Forget Jason Bourne. Forget 007. Forget The French Connection. Equally thrilling chase scenes occur every day in the forests of the Uwharries. While action films are standard fare at the multiplex, we rarely witness the dramas unfolding in our own backyard, as raptors pursue their prey. Want a ticket to a front row seat? Spend […]

I was fortunate to have a completely new and exciting hunting experience recently, going grouse hunting in West Virginia. I’ve not done much upland bird hunting, so it was different from most of my hunting experiences. It was both challenging and exhilarating, and I can’t wait to go again. Grouse live mostly in wooded areas, […]

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to spend a day in the field with two luminaries from the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. Ornithologist John Gerwin has studied the special population of black-throated green warblers that breeds on forested peaks in the Uwharries, and he was eager to spend some time in our grasslands. […]

During one hike over my summer internship with The Land Trust for Central NC, we were able to spot a small and sweet little bird. Here, in the Uwharries, if you hear birds calling “peetsah” or making sounds that are akin to funny laughter, they are most likely flycatchers. We have Great Crested and Acadian […]

These days it seems as if there is an app for everything. Besides a whole host of social media options including Facebook and Instagram, and nearly every game you can imagine, you can monitor your diet, map your run, track your finances, read a book, and even find the closest – and cleanest – public […]

Sept. 1 marks a sad centenary in our nation’s natural history. In the early days of World War I, a passenger pigeon died alone in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. “Martha” had lived her entire life in captivity. She was the last of her kind. The estimated population of passenger pigeons had once been […]

I’ve spent the spring and early summer in pursuit of a tiny, black and yellow bird with a buzzy song – the black-throated green warbler of the Uwharrie National Forest. It’s made for an experience I’ll never forget. As a Duke University graduate student, I’ve been an intern during May and June with the LandTrust […]