Red-necked phalarope, Bonaparte’s gull, band-rumped storm-petrel and harlequin duck. If you are thinking these don’t sound like names that should be included in a story about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you’re right.

Find out how birds talk to each other during a program offered at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 29, at the Cowee School Arts and Heritage Center near Franklin. This talk was rescheduled from its original Jan. 15 date due to inclement weather. 

If you plan to travel around Western North Carolina or East Tennessee to visit friends or family and eat turkey for the coming Thanksgiving holiday, there is a good chance you’ll spot a few wild turkeys along the way.

As we prepare for the arrival of fall, we can also be on the lookout for a breathtaking wildlife spectacle that is a part of life here in the Southern Appalachian Mountains: the migration of the broad-winged hawk. 

Audubon North Carolina is urging residents to help keep the skies dark this fall to help birds as they migrate south.

A pair of lectures planned for the Highlands Nature Center over the next couple weeks will explore the complexities of old-growth forests and avian life.