Natural History Journal

In the world of birding, " Big Days " are competitions to see how many species of birds a birder can find in a specified area in just one 24-hour period.  They range from formal to informal, and the competition may be shared with others or simply with oneself.  This month, Eric and I were excited to set aside a whole day for our own, unofficial, just-for-fun "Big Day," setting ourselves the challenge of finding 100 species (or more) in our own county.   Here in North America, January is not the time of year when most Big Day birding events take place.  (In fact,  Global Big Day , a birding event in which birders from around the world participate, takes place annually in May - a much more reasonable season to be out birding!)  At this cold and often dreary time of year, many birds across much of the U.S. have migrated south for the winter, and most habitats are just too iced over to yield a great deal of bird diversity.   But here in the Cent...

After visiting at least ten different Civil War battlefields in Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia last summer ( which you can read about here ), Eric and I headed even farther east to spend a few days in beautiful Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  I visited this park 15 years ago, and I was eager to see it again - especially one of my favorite places, Cade's Cove.  A hotspot of biodiversity in the Southeastern United States, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a naturalist's delight.  We did some birding during our visit to the park, but most of our time was spent hiking through lush forests and rambling around the many old cabins and homesteads that have been carefully preserved by the National Park Service.  A handsome American Black Bear: easy to see why these guys are everyone's favorite North American mammal! The most noteworthy mammals we encountered on our visit were, without contest, all the bears! American Black Bears are abundant in Great Smoky Moun...

Last July, my history professor husband and I took a trip to Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia to visit a selection of Civil War battlefields that comprise the "western theater" of that great war.  From our starting point in Vicksburg, Mississippi, we drove north up the scenic Natchez Trace Parkway to Shiloh, Tennessee, then northeast to Fort Donelson, where we also contrived to visit the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge.  We then made our way back to the southeast, where we visited the Nashville area and Murfreesboro before heading to Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain, ending our tour of battlefields with Chickamauga in Georgia.    If those places and names mean little to you beside hazy memories of your high school U.S. history class, fear not.  This is less about the history (sorry, Eric) and more about the wildlife that thrives in these historic places. The preservation of battlefields over the last century has led to the inadvertent creation of some excel...

White Wagtails are one of the most familiar species of songbird across much of Europe and Asia, but here in North America, any time one of these Old World beauties shows up as a vagrant, it causes quite the stir in the birding community.  And just before Christmas, that is exactly what happened on the coast of Central California, near the beach town of Santa Cruz. Rare White Wagtail in Santa Cruz, California Earlier this week, Eric and I drove over to Wilder Ranch State Park, where this bird has been reliably re-found almost daily for the last three weeks, to try to get a glimpse of this rarity.  The catch was that this small seven-inch-long black-and-white bird had been hanging out on a beach that is closed to human visitors (to protect Snowy Plover nesting habitat) and viewable only from a cliff-top overlook.  The beach is nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and at times the wagtail was reported to have been spotted only very distantly, way down at the far end of the...

Birding may be described as equal parts science, art, and sport.  And on the first of the year, one of the many games of birding begins: the honor system-based competition among birders to see the most number of species in x region during  y  timeframe.  On this day, many birders begin their quest to find as many species as they can during the course of the year, month or day, whether that be within one's own backyard, county, state, country or even across the whole world !   The combination of "games" birders can devise for themselves is nearly endless, and each year is different.  Some may do a "green" Big Year, counting only species they see while on foot or by bicycle .  Some may only count birds within their home patch, or birds they were also able to photograph.  Birders may do a Big Day of birding, a Big Year , or just challenge themselves to what they can find in an hour!   Many birders are diligent list-keepers, carefully...