Natural History Journal

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...

I am continually overawed by the beauty of California's grasslands.   Golden through the heat of summer and autumn, winter rains bring transformation to the hills, cloaking them in verdant splendor to rival any other landscape for beauty.  Though fleeting, the glories of spring on wildflower-spangled grasslands are a delight to behold. Just have a look for yourself! Grasslands in eastern Stanislaus county at sunrise. Sunrise is without question my favorite time on the grasslands.  Check out this article to experience an autumn sunrise at this same location! More than just aesthetically pleasing, California's grasslands provide critical habitat for a number of species that are in decline as their habitat shrinks, like Horned Larks and Grasshopper Sparrows . Learn more about the value of California's grasslands , along with how and why to protect them, in this article. Tiny treasures in the grass, wildflowers are undoubtedly the stars of the spring grasslands. ...

With all the less-than-great news floating around out there these days about the future of the environment in general, and birds in particular, it's refreshing to pause and reflect on the success stories the world of conservation has seen in the fifty years since the implementation of the Endangered Species Act in December of 1973. While human activity has undoubtedly caused bird populations to decrease drastically in that span of time, (and sadly those numbers may continue to drop) conservationists across North America have managed to make some pretty incredible changes for the better for a number of species as well.  The Endangered Species Act has protected over 1,600 species in its fifty-year history, and is credited with saving nearly 300 species from extinction.     The California Condor is one such example, a species that would be gone today if it weren't for the incredible work of a massive team of researchers and conservationists.  Other success stori...

Christened the "Rocky Mountain Plover" in 1834 by John James Audubon, the Mountain Plover, as it is now called, is actually a bird of short grass prairies rather than true mountain habitats.  Named for its breeding range in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States, specifically in parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, a large percentage of Mountain Plovers spend a significant portion of their lives in California, where they winter on remnants of grassland, alkali flats and, most notably, plowed and fallow agricultural fields. The Mountain Plover is a habitat specialist, adapted to life on short grass prairies and other areas of bare ground and sparse coverings of very short vegetation.   And in California, the bare ground that Mountain Plovers need to survive is rapidly dwindling. Mountain Plover, Yolo County California, January Almost exclusively insectivorous, Mountain Plovers spend their entire lives on the ground, scurrying along with a distinctive run-and-sto...

"What makes a duck a duck?" This question was posed to me the other day by a friendly gentleman who stopped to chat as I stood behind my spotting scope, peering over massive swells and crashing waves at a distant flock of dark specks bobbing on the surface of the water beyond the breakers.  These specks, I had informed him, were ducks.  More specifically, they were a delightful collection of three species of scoter, a highly specialized type of sea duck designed for life on the rugged, wave-battered coast.   Those are ducks?   I could feel the skepticism.   Yes, ducks.  But not dabbling puddle ducks, like the familiar Mallard, or even hardy diving ducks, like scaup.   These are sea ducks! Surf Scoters in Monterey Bay, off the coast of Moss Landing, California.  July. I answered his question the best I could with somewhat divided attention: Biology, physiology, behavior and life history all combine to make a duck a duck, so that even...