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...

Can anyone really argue that there is a more iconic bird of Christmas in North America than the strikingly scarlet Northern Cardinal?  With brilliant crimson plumage that both matches red holly berries and contrasts beautifully with evergreen foliage and white snow, the cardinal seems to embody everything in the natural world that is beautiful in wintertime - and by extension, Christmastime.  (Check out this article for more reasons why the Northern Cardinal is the ideal emblem of Christmas.)  But, there may be more than one iconic winter bird out there that deserves to grace wintery Christmas cards and the December page of the calendar.   Join me in a little festive bird-related fun as I muse over a few additional species that I wouldn't mind seeing crafted into Christmas tree ornaments, shaped into sugar cookies, and emblazoned on Christmas sweaters! A somewhat wintery Northern Cardinal... in Texas.  Hands down, the most iconic bird of Christmas in North...

During the first week of April, Eric and I spent six amazing days birding in South Texas, starting in the McAllen area and ending on South Padre Island.  Follow along with our journey here: Part I:  Lower Rio Grande Valley Thornscrub and Woodland Part II:  Coastal Prairie and Thornscrub Part III:  Gulf Coast Wading Birds Part IV:  South Padre Island Neotropical Migrants After moving down the Rio Grande River toward the Gulf of Mexico, we left the woodlands behind us and ventured out onto the coastal prairie of South Texas.  Here, we spent an incredibly windy April morning birding along Old Port Isabel Road, at Palo Alto National Battlefield, and, briefly, Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.  The beautiful flowers of a prickly pear cactus In the open country of the coastal prairies, we spotted Scissor-tailed Flycatchers hanging out on barbed wire fences and powerlines.  This gorgeous flycatcher, with its long, elegant tail feathers and salmo...