At Wild South’s recent “Green Tie Gala,” friend, writer, poet and publisher Thomas Rain Crowe, with a knowing wink, slipped a slim beautifully bound chapbook into my hands. I cracked it open immediately upon arriving home and read the first poem “Antidote to Narcissus:”

I’ve heard the great blue heron

Cannot see its own reflection

Cast from the water’s surface —

a gift that it may never lose a fish

in the image of a perfect eye

or fail to see a frog amid

such slate feathers shed

from a rookery on high.

If only we could fade that way

Into the mist of rivers,

Into rhododendron shade;

If only we could be so beautiful

And not know a thing about it.

I perused some of the 14 other titles — “Parable of the Flycatcher,” “The Nuthatch,” “Hawks: A Homily,” “Parable of the Wren,” — then closed the book and left it on the kitchen counter near the coffee pot to wait for dawn.

Next morning with coffee and book in hand, I sat out on the deck where towhees were conferring with chickadees and cardinals conversed with wrens to read the rest of A Conference of Birds. The book is Christopher Martin’s first book of poetry. Martin lives in the Georgia piedmont near Kennesaw Mountain with his wife and two children and is pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University. He is the editor of the online literary magazine “Flycatcher: A Journal of Native Imagination” and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in “Shambhala Sun,” “Loose Change Magazine,” “New Southerner,” “Buddhist Poetry Review,” and others. Martin is working on “Native Moments: An Ecology of Fatherhood,” a collection of essays and has contributed to the “Elevate/Art Above Underground” project in Atlanta.

Nature has called to poets ever since there have been poets. It spurred ancient Greek poet Theocritus to pen his idylls and has been muse for every epoch of literary history. And poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns and Blake penned lines in the voice of their time and passed the baton on to Emerson, Thoreau, and others then followed by Frost, who knew how to turn a common phrase, and today in voices of their own poets like Oliver, and, closer to home, Ray and Crowe and others with open eyes, open ears and open hearts speak to us in clear voices. The speak not only about the world around us but how the world around us and the world within us is only one world.

Martin has a strong, clear and compelling voice to add — from “Hawks: A Homily” “… But I wonder how one can speak/of angels, whose wings we have not seen,/when red-tail hawks still fly over interstates/on black-dappled, rust, red, white-brushed,/creation-colored wings,/and nest on rooftops/angels never would.”

And he understands how those worlds are intertwined, “… My child cannot see that far,/I’m sure, cannot see the falling,/dancing flares of dark purple,/the swallows that follow dragonflies./Before my son, I’m not sure/I would have seen them, either,/not sure I would have opened my eyes.” From “Watching Purple Martins.”

I found Martin’s poetry tight and timely; what poetry is about — in the now, while brushing eternity. I know you can purchase A Conference of Birds here - http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781883197261/a-conference-of-birds.aspx. Or for more information contact New Native Press at http://www.newnativepress.com/.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Rachel Reid of Andon-Reid Bed and Breakfast asking if I was up to leading a birding trip on March 31. Now, I’m quite pleased to mention that Andon-Reid has a birding package for their guests that includes my services as a guide – please see http://blog.andonreidinn.com/, but I was a bit concerned as March 31 is a bit early for migration in Western North Carolina. However, Rachel said her guests were insistent about a half-day birding package.

I was still a little bit skeptical when I arrived at the B&B around 8:30 a.m. last Saturday; concerned that the guests didn’t understand that our species pool would be limited to winter residents, plus perhaps a few waterfowl at Lake Junaluska and at best one or two early migrants. But when I sat down to have a cup of coffee with Dr. Ashwini Anand, his wife Prabhune and son Pavan, my fears were quickly dispelled.

The good doctor explained that he and his family loved to travel and that they were amateur photographers. He said that on a recent trip to Belize they had encountered a group on a birding tour and this group’s focus and excitement on observing birds was infectious. He said that he and his family were casual observers of feeders on their property in London, Ky., but after encountering the group in Belize they had become quite interested in learning more and more about birding. Their enthusiasm was contagious. It pricked at a kind of common bond I think most birders share at some level and recognize in others; they had been bitten by the bug.

Well we started out at Lake Junaluska in hopes that Friday’s storms had knocked some migrant waterfowl from the sky to go with the migrant swallows I knew had returned. We weren’t disappointed. We found northern shovelers, blue-winged teal, ruddy ducks, a lone female ring-necked duck, a couple of female buffleheads, double-crested cormorants, pied-billed grebes and a nicely colored common loon. And the birding gods were kind to us as near the new wetlands we found a mature bald eagle perched in a tree at the lake’s edge.

We got great looks at tree swallows, northern rough-winged swallows and purple martins at the lake but no barn swallows. That was quickly remedied when we made a short stop at Richland Creek just across the highway from the lake. Barn swallows were cruising the golf course. And as we were watching the barn swallows, Pavan noticed some movement in the brush at the edge of the creek. We watched as a song sparrow chased a Louisiana waterthrush out of the brambles and sent it farther down the creek.

As I mentioned, the Anands were avid photographers and long clear looks at the bird Thoreau said, “… carries the sky on his back” – eastern bluebird — plus cooperative American goldfinches and a red-winged blackbird showing off its epaulets led to a cacophony of shutter clicks that would make the paparazzi swoon.

With time running out we headed up the Blue Ridge Parkway to try for some high-elevation specialties. We were able to call up one small group of cooperative black-capped chickadees near Waterrock Knob before we had to head back to Andon-Reid. Back at the B&B we tallied our species list, I believe we wound up with 44 species. I think the Anands were pleased, I know I was. It is always a pleasure to be reconnected to that instinctive inspirational spark; that pure and simple joy that nature brings to the human psyche.  

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

The tapping of pileateds ... means attachment to a nest site

and attachment of the members of a pair to each other . . .

When one pair of pileateds is especially excited about

meeting its mate, it bends its head and bill far back,

waving them back and forth in an arc of 45-degrees

as it jerks its whole body in what I call a ‘bill-waving dance.’

Thus, they keep their pair bonds strong with small ceremonies.

— Lawrence Kilham, “On Watching Birds” (1988)

Here in the Smokies region there are six woodpecker species one can anticipate encountering on a regular basis. Red-headed woodpeckers are sometimes reported, but I have only seen a few in the years that I’ve resided here. My favorite among this tribe is the pileated woodpecker. The common name can be correctly pronounced as either “pi-lee-a-tid” or “pill-ee-a-tid.” “Pileated” indicates the bird has a crest on its head. The word derives from a skullcap (a “pileaus”) worn in ancient Rome. Male and female pileateds can be easily distinguished: males sport red mustaches and full-red crests on their heads, while females display black mustaches and half-red, half-black crests.

Unlike the larger 21-inch-long ivory-billed woodpecker, the pileated proved adaptable to environmental changes wrought by man so that it has — after a period of setbacks — become a commonplace feature of both our backcountry and community woodlands. Spotting one of these 19-inch-long crow-sized birds isn’t at all uncommon. When you do flush one, it will sound loud “yucca, yucca, yucca” calls and flash its vivid white under-wing markings.

The mainstays of the big bird’s diet are ants and other wood-boring insects. Matchbook-size chips of bark and wood chiseled from a feeding tree or log are sure signs of its presence. Using its tail for support, the bird can back down a tree as easily as it can climbup a tree.

The species usually mates in February and then spends most of March digging a nest cavity. The rectangular entrance hole (other woodpeckers excavate entrance holes that are more or less round) will be located anywhere from 10 to 75 feet above ground. After the three to five eggs are laid in mid-April, incubation requires about 18 days.

Pileateds will often return to the same nest tree year after year, but a new nesting cavity is usually excavated each season. If you attempt to climb the nest tree and look through the entrance hole at the baby birds, it’s not unlikely that the parents will attack you with their formidable beaks.

A mother pileated has been photographed retrieving her eggs from a nest tree that was blown down. Shortly after the tree fell, she transferred the clutch of three to a new site.

One of the advantages of being a permanent resident rather than a migratory species is that individual birds can keep up with their mates from season to season. A lot of the ritual activity associated with pileateds, especially during the fall season, has to do with maintaining ongoing relationships. The online “Birds of North America” (available by subscription) provides additional background:

“When a mate dies, the surviving bird remains in the territory and seeks a new mate from adjacent areas. Once established, the pair defends the territory by drumming, calling, and chasing off intruders. A pair of Pileated Woodpeckers evicted young bluebirds from a nest cavity used by the woodpeckers the previous year and then enlarged the cavity and nested in it.

“Reactions to climbing snakes vary from concern to possible nest abandonment. Based on video camera data at 32 Pileated Woodpecker nests in Arkansas, black rat snakes entered 14 nest cavities. Adults ejected snakes at eight cavities, though the snake returned to 5 cavities. Nestlings fledged from only three of the 14 cavities with rat snake attacks. Adults appeared able to eject snakes that were smaller than 60 inches in length from nest cavities.”

Let’s close with this little poem by Maxwell Corydon Wheat Jr., that I happened upon on the I-net:

Pileated Woodpecker …

dressed for his coronation

in ebony cape,

ermine trim,

scarlet-crested crown.

But would royalty be caught

backing down a dead hickory.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Dateline 1999: David Kullivan a forestry/wildlife student at Louisiana State University, tells faculty that while turkey hunting in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area, a pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers foraged in trees as close as 10 yards from him. Soon after, an expert-avian search team fielded in part by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and funded largely by Zeiss Optics hit the woods to track down this fabled icon of southern bottomland hardwood forests. After weeks of searching, the search team was left scratching their heads as the ethereal Lord God Bird once again vanished into the impenetrable swamp.

Dateline 2000-2004: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz … For most, thoughts of ivorybills had faded back into the foggy swamps.

Dateline April 28, 2005: Announcement of the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker made by John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, at the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. Those present included Gale Norton (then Secretary of the Interior), Michael Johanns (then Secretary of Agriculture) and the Congressional delegation from Arkansas where the bird had been “rediscovered” on Bayou de View. And there were no cautions or qualifications as Fitzpatrick announced: “For a bird guy, I can’t begin to tell you how thrilling it is — it’s thrilling beyond words to stand here with two cabinet members at my side … After 60 years of fading hopes that we would ever see this spectacular bird again, the ivory-billed woodpecker has been rediscovered.”

Now we have to backtrack just a bit because Cornell was actually doubling-down on “evidence” they acquired in spring 2004, but they were buying time to, according to the Cornell University News Service, “… allow the search team to gather convincing evidence of the bird’s existence.”

May 2005: Not to be outdone, Auburn ornithologist Geoff Hill and students “find” ivory-billed woodpeckers on the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida Panhandle. In fact, Hill estimated that there were likely at least nine pairs of ivorybills in the Choctawhatchee.

And about that evidence:

Cornell’s 2006 search results: The single best piece of evidence obtained was the four-second video footage taken by David Luneau on 25 April 2004. In total, the Cornell search team spent 35,440 hours engaged in various forms of search activity including man-hours plus automatic cameras and automatic sound-recording devices.

Cornell went on to expand their search (increasing man and remote sensing hours), sending teams to Florida and Louisiana through 2009.

So where does that bring us to today? Private, individual searchers continue to find ivory-billed woodpeckers. Some have even produced their own blurry videos. Yet none have produced any kind of clear images and none have been able to take researchers back and document sightings.

When this saga began a lot was made about not being able to prove a negative – in other words there is no way to prove that ivorybills are extinct, I mean we can’t have someone under every tree at the same time, right? But it looks like the scientific community has decided to take on the challenge.

July 2011: Dr. Nicholas J. Gotelli, University of Vermont, et al, publishes “Specimen-based modeling, Stopping Rules, and the Extinction of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.” Gotelli put the odds at finding a live ivory-billed at less than 1 in 15,625.

October 2011: Andrew Solow of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, et al, publishes “Uncertain Sightings and the Extinction of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker,” which concludes there is, “…substantial support for extinction.”

I hear the ringing call of another iconic woodpecker in my ears – ha-ha-ha-HA-ha! ha-ha-ha-HA-ha! ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and a naturalist. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

No, I’m not talking about those of us who stay in the warm confines at Cataloochee, nursing Ninja porters, while the kids hit the slopes. These cold-weather wimps are ruby-throated hummingbirds. As most of you hummer-watchers know, our ruby-throats, basically the only nesting hummers in the eastern U.S., have generally all departed for warmer climes by the end of October. But are the times and maybe the climes changing?

My recent (Jan. 8-16) weekly installment of “This Week at Hilton Pond” titled “Winter Hummingbirds in the U.S. (Ruby-Throats & Global Warming)” raised some really interesting questions. This Week at Hilton Pond is a weekly e-newsletter produced by Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History’s executive director Bill Hilton Jr.

Hilton is no stranger to winter hummers. He has banded more than 80 winter hummers since 1991. I met Hilton back in 2002 when he came to the residence of Ted and Ann Kirby in Waynesville and banded a rufous hummingbird that had taken up residence — see www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/ 11_02/11_27_02/out_lola.html.

Hilton noted in the newsletter that despite all the vagrant hummers he had banded he had never banded a ruby-throated after Oct. 18 or before March 27. But according to Hilton’s account all of that changed this past December when he got a call from a friend from Buxton. This friend, who lives between the Atlantic Ocean and Pamlico Sound, reported that she had at least a half-dozen ruby-throated hummingbirds coming to feeders in her yard.

Hilton said they arrived in Buxton around 1:30 p.m. and that by 2 p.m. they had their first ruby-throat (a female) in the trap. In two days at Buxton, Hilton banded nine winter ruby-throats, seven (five females and two immature males) in his friend’s yard and two other females at an alternate site. Hilton noted that all the hummers were healthy and one was even going through its annual mid-winter molt.

Hilton, like any good scientist, is never more than a reflective moment away from “why” and/or “how.” And like any good scientist he would never posit one event as proof of anything, but keen anecdotal observations are the precursor of any hypothesis worth more study.

Hilton reflects that the warm Gulf Stream is only about 10 miles offshore of the Outer Banks and that it helps to moderate winter temps. But, “… even though the Gulf Stream has been this close for millennia there were NO reports of winter ruby-throats in North Carolina before about 1995 or so,” writes Hilton. He believes that ruby-throats on the Outer Banks may be benefiting from ever-so-slight increases in annual winter temperatures – gasp! “Climate change.”

Hilton writes, “… Mountaintop glaciers melting … polar ice fields shrinking … droughts worsening … severe storms increasing … ocean levels rising (and even affecting dunes and beaches at Cape Hatteras National Seashore) … and now “cold weather wimp” ruby-throated hummingbirds wintering where they never have before …” and wonders out loud, “… if – because of their recently acquired ability to survive WITHOUT migrating to the neotropics – ruby-throated hummingbirds are THE species that finally drives home the point that global warming is for real?”

To read Hilton’s entertaining narrative regarding the winter ruby-throats (along with his usual outstanding photography) and/or to learn more about Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History visit www.hiltonpond.org.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Thanks to a head’s up from Tim Carstens last Sunday morning (1/15), I saw a drake northern pintail, Anas acuta, at Lake Junaluska. This “nomad of the sky” is cosmopolitan in distribution, breeding in northern Europe, Asia and North America. Its range has been estimated at more than 11 million square miles and it is known to overwinter as far south as Panama, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Some even make it to Hawaii and other Pacific Islands for their winter break. Not even oceans can deter this sleek strong flyer. One pintail tagged in Labrador, Canada, was found nine days later in England and several pintails tagged in Japan have been recovered from the U.S., as far east as Mississippi.

In North America, the northern pintail breeds from the prairie pothole region of the Upper Midwest across Canada and Alaska. Nearly half of this population migrates through California. Many overwinter in California’s Central Valley but others continue south to the west coast of Mexico. Northern pintails in the Central Flyway overwinter from the Texas Panhandle down to the Gulf coast of Texas and Louisiana, most of those in the Mississippi Flyway spend their winter in Louisiana with smaller numbers spread throughout Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. The primary wintering range for northern pintails in the Atlantic Flyway is along the Atlantic coast of New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. North Carolina generally accounts for 50 percent or more of this population.

The drake northern pintail is one handsome dude. The head is chocolate brown with a clean white stripe that snakes up from the white breast and neck. The back and sides are slate-gray with black highlights and it has a bright white rump patch. The “pin” tail is long. It can account for a quarter of the total length of an adult mail in breeding plumage. The middle two tail feathers are black and the outside ones are gray with white margins. An iridescent green speculum is displayed in flight and the bill is blue with a black stripe in the center and black margins.

The female is more muted with a tawny head and a mottled brown and white body. Her bill is dark blue-gray, usually with darker blotches. The female has a rather long pointed tail as duck tails go, but nothing comparable to the male’s pin.

The drake’s tail accounts for most of the colloquial names — like spiketail, sprigtail, sprig, etc. but I knew them in Louisiana as snakeheads. I’m not sure of the origin of this name, but I’ve heard two accounts. One is the white stripe that “snakes” up the drake’s head and the other is in reference to the bird’s habits. Pintails are a skittish lot and when they’re on the water and they become alarmed they raise their heads up on their long snake-like necks to get a better look around.

Because of the pintail’s immense range and global population it is listed as a species of least concern. However, the northern pintail’s North American population has been in a tailspin since the late 1950s. Numbers have dropped from an estimated 10 million in 1957 to around 3 million today. Disease has played a part in the loss of North American pintails, both in the past and more recently. Two outbreaks of avian botulism in Canada and Utah in 1997 claimed close to a million pintails. But loss of habitat and changes in agriculture appear to be the most serious threats to North American pintails.

Numbers from the Atlantic Flyway mirror this dramatic decline. The Atlantic Flyway Midwinter Survey recorded an average of about 250,000 birds in the late 1950s. Today’s survey records about 50,000 pintails.

North Carolina joined South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Florida in 2004 to create a multiagency project committed to finding ways to reverse this population decline.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

This year’s ninth annual Balsam Christmas Bird Count (CBC) was held Friday Dec. 30. As I was driving home from work at 7 a.m. that Friday morning things were looking good. By the time I got a nap and met Paul Super, who had graciously agreed to help out, and his friend Patrick Flaherty beating the bushes around Autumn Care, it was about 12:30 p.m. and the wind was bllloooooowwwwiiinnggg!

Now wind is a terrible obstacle for birders. Birds are prone to sit tight rather than be buffeted around and you can’t here a chip note or song unless you’re within 50 feet or so of the source. But after last year’s 10 hours in the pouring rain, wind wasn’t so bad.

Paul and Patrick had already done the yeoman’s work, recording more than 30 species.

We left Autumn Care and went down to the vicinity of Barber’s Orchard to an area that had historically been very good for sparrows. Much of the landscape was altered due to the EPA cleanup or arsenic from the old orchard. While we were lamenting the lack of sparrows we looked up to see a gorgeous adult bald eagle, right overhead, flying low across the open spaces. That made us feel a little better about the lack of sparrows.

We kicked around a little more and flushed a pretty rufous-looking sparrow-sized bird from the brambles. We were all on the same page, thinking fox sparrow. But try as we might we could never coax the bird up again and, of course, no one got a fox sparrow for the count.

In fact the count total, 65 species, tied the record low for species. It was the same number we recorded last year and I, for one, would much rather be dry and wind-blown with 65 species than soaked to the bone with 65 species.

And while we tied our low record for bird species, we may have set a record for participation. I think Bob Olthoff, count compiler, said we had nearly 30 participants for this year’s count. It was a great mixture of tried and true troopers plus a good dose of new blood.

Paul, Patrick and I left the orchard and made a couple of short stops before making it to the Waynesville watershed. The reservoir was vacant of waterfowl for the second year in a row.

We did get to add golden-crowned kinglet, brown creeper, ruffed grouse and common raven to our list at the watershed. We still dipped on what one would think would be an easy find in the watershed — pileated woodpecker. We also didn’t have a regular winter resident in the area — hermit thrush. We decided to leave the watershed and head back to an area near the Waynesville Rec Center where we frequently find hermit thrushes in the winter. We dipped again.

By this time it was getting late and Patrick needed to go. I dropped Paul and Patrick and made one more mad dash to the watershed hoping to call up an owl at dusk. Once again — the best laid plans of mice and birders — not an owl around. But the bird gods smile and as I was dashing around the watershed, I spooked a hermit thrush that flushed and flew across the road right in front of me. It was the only one recorded on the count.

The lies, I mean stories, warm, tasty food and cool libations at Bocelli’s were as enjoyable and congenial as ever. And when we counted down the list we had two brand new species for the count despite the overall low total. Our group and one other nearby had seen the adult bald eagle and the Lake Junaluska group had an immature so we recorded two bald eagles (new species), and the Lake Junaluska group also recorded a greater scaup which was new for the circle.

As usual the Balsam CBC wishes to thank the staff and management at Bocelli’s for putting up with a bunch of noisy birders and to also thank the Town of Waynesville for access to the watershed and Waynesville residents Jim Francis and Glen Tolar for access to their private property.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

That’s bird-Friday of course. And bird-Friday got off to a pretty chilly start.

It was 26 degrees Fahrenheit when I got to Lake Junaluska at around 8:45 a.m. Not much has changed species-wise at the lake for the past couple of weeks or so except the red-heads were gone. At least I didn’t see any Friday. There still were plenty of ring-necked ducks, ruddy ducks, pied-billed grebes and coots. There were a couple of lesser scaup and I also saw one bufflehead, four hooded mergansers, one great blue heron, three horned grebes and one double-crested cormorant. I also found a Cooper’s hawk keeping a close watch on the coots in the little channel between the wetlands and the narrow island. Counting a few passerines, I wound up with 27 species for the hour I spent around Lake J.

Next I headed for Kituwah to get my sparrow fix and see what else I might find. I got to Kituwah around 11 a.m. and it was still cool, mid-30s, but warming nicely. I was greeted at the entrance to Kituwah by an immature red-tailed hawk perched in a small tree. I recorded three red-tails for the morning but suspect there were five. It’s hard to tell after an hour or so if you’re seeing a different hawk or the same one. But I know I saw two adults and at least one immature. I also had one immature red-shouldered hawk near the wetlands.

The railroad track at the entrance also provided one of my target sparrow species as I found three adult white-crowned sparrows. Next, I was treated to a splash of late autumn color when I found four brightly plumaged eastern meadowlarks – their lemon-yellow breasts shining in the morning sun against the short green grass they were foraging in.

Song sparrows were everywhere and field sparrows were fairly common but after nearly an hour I still hadn’t found any white-throated sparrows. When I finally found some white-throateds, I found two groups in proximity that probably had at least 50 birds between them. I didn’t investigate too long because a flash of rufous leaving the cornfields for a nearby woody tangle alerted me to the possibility of another target sparrow. Sure enough, I approached the tangle and pished and up popped three dapper fox sparrows. These large handsome sparrows are one of my favorite winter birds and Kituwah almost always provides a few. There was one other sparrow that I expected to find at Kituwah so I headed to the wetlands and slogged around, much to the chagrin of a great blue heron looking for a meal, in search of swamp sparrows. It was there I stumbled upon the rarest bird of the day. I saw a lot of sparrow activity in a brushy clump at the edge of the soggy area. As I approached to investigate I heard the distinctive, dry double chit or chat call of a sedge wren. I circled the clump about three times from as close as 10 feet, flushing at least a half-dozen song sparrows but never getting a look at the chatterer. I left it chattering and slogged on around the wetlands finally flushing three swamp sparrows.

I wound up with six species of sparrows – song, field, white-throated, white-crowned, fox and swamp and good looks at another one of my favorite winter birds the hermit thrush. The total count for a couple of hours at Kituwah was 36 species. Not a bad B-Friday and I didn’t have to stand in a single line.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Avid birder and burgeoning cyclist Lena Gallitano has come up with an ambitious plan to combine two of her passions. Gallitano will take part in Cycle North Carolina’s annual fall ride. This year’s trek will be a modest 500-mile affair from Elkin, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Outer Bank’s Corolla.

Now I don’t know if it was a lack of oxygen to the brain from all that pedaling or an endorphin induced “biker’s high” moment of revelation, but according to Gallitano the idea came to her during one of her training rides this past spring. “On the greenways in Raleigh this spring, I did a lot of birding by ear while riding my bike which made me think … is there a way I can turn this challenging adventure into something more worthwhile? The birds made my training rides more pleasurable and I’ve been a member of Audubon for many years so that’s when it clicked: I could make the ride a fundraiser called Bike for Birds,” recounted Gallitano.

Of course, for those who know Lena it comes as no surprise that birds were in her ears, on her mind and in her heart as she was cycling Raleigh’s greenways. The North Carolina native has a long history of working on behalf of her feathered friends. Gallitano is a long-time member and past president of Wake Audubon Society. She has served on the boards of Audubon North Carolina and the Carolina bird Club. As soon as she retired from North Carolina State University, where she worked for the Cooperative Extension Service, Gallitano focused much of her time and energy working on environmental, educational and conservation projects that benefit birds and other North Carolina wildlife by protecting and enhancing the wild places they need to survive and thrive.

That hard work was recognized in 2004, when she not only won Audubon North Carolina’s 2004 Volunteer of the Year award for her grassroots efforts in opposing the U.S. Navy’s plan for locating an outlying landing field adjacent to Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, but was also awarded the Governor’s Award as Wildlife Volunteer of the Year by the North Carolina Wildlife Federation for her work in helping to make the North Carolina Birding Trail a reality.

Did I say combining two of her passions? I meant combining three of her passions. Gallitano has also served on the board of N.C. Beautiful whose mission statement is: “To foster environmental stewardship through education and outreach to perpetuate the natural beauty of North Carolina.”

And there will be no shortage of natural beauty on this year’s Cycle N.C.’s fall ride. The tour will start in Elkin, where 1,000 or so riders will hit North Carolina’s scenic backroads for their trip to the coast. There will be stops at Autumn Creek Vineyards plus other venues in communities such as Mebane, Henderson, Rocky Mount, Manteo and Corolla. After all, there’s no rule that says you can’t have fun performing a good deed but remember, even through beautiful scenery 500 miles is still 500 miles.

If you want to support Lena, North Carolina’s varied bird life and/or Audubon North Carolina please contribute to her Bike for Birds fundraiser. You can mail your tax deductible donation to Audubon North Carolina, 123 Kingston Drive, Suite 206 Chapel Hill, NC 27514 please make your check out to Bike for Birds. There is also an online giving page at www.ncaudubon.org. Audubon North Carolina member and Bike for Birds supporter, Bon Parker has announced that she will match every $20 donation with her own $20 donation up to $1,000, so $20 will get you $40 – there’s a deal!

All donations will directly support the work of Audubon North Carolina, supporting its vital work of managing 19 coastal sanctuaries, monitoring 96 Important Bird Areas, protecting imperiled species like golden-winged warblers, cerulean warblers and the largest colony of beach-nesting least tern in North Carolina. Hope is a thing with wheels.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Migration is at full tilt across the region right now. In the passerine (songbird) department thrushes, grosbeaks and tanagers are joining in making those fallouts and mixed flocks even more exciting. And while the night skies have been busy for the last month (passerines migrate at night) some of the more notable diurnal migrants are beginning to show up across the region.

The most common diurnal migrant in the East is the broad-winged hawk. Nearly two million broad-wingeds nest in North America and overwinter in Central and South America. These chunky, crow-sized raptors and other larger-bodied birds such as eagles, ospreys, wood storks, cranes and pelicans utilize thermals and updrafts to aid them in their southerly journey. Hawk Watches along the broad-winged’s migration path, many of them setup and maintained by volunteers, help scientist monitor this species.

Caesar’s Head State Park, located on U.S. 276 in South Carolina, just south of Brevard, is probably the most notable Hawk Watch in the area. Nearly 10,000 broad-wings are reported annually from Caesar’s Head from mid-September till early October. As of Sept. 17 only 46 broad-wings had been recorded at Caesar’s Head, so if you have some free time between now and the first of October there are lots of birds still left to come through. The close-knit group of volunteers who keep a tab on broad-wings at Caesar’s Head call themselves the Wing Nuts. Wing Nuts are always happy to share with fellow birders and/or interested onlookers.

The mountain passes accessible along the Blue Ridge Parkway offer a myriad of opportunities to find migrating songbirds. While migrants may be found almost anywhere along the Parkway during migration there are some time-tested spots. Ridge Junction Overlook at the entrance to Mount Mitchell State Park at milepost 355.5 is one of those spots. This is a great place to spend a morning from now through the middle of October, and it’s easy migrant chasing – just bring a lawn chair and setup shop – the migrants will come to you. Some other notable spots to catch migrants on the Parkway include Craggy Gardens, Craggy Pinnacle, Walker Knob Overlook, Heintooga Ridge Road and Big Witch Gap.

A short trip to Rankin Bottoms in Cocke County, Tennessee, can provide some fine shorebird watching in the mountains. Shorebirding at Rankin Bottoms depends on the water level in Lake Douglas and each fall the Tennessee Valley Authority begins to draw down the lake leaving acres of exposed mudflats attracting weary migrants looking for a place to rest and refuel.

Some recent finds at Rankin bottoms include short-billed dowitcher, lesser yellowlegs, sanderlings, least, western, stilt and semipalmated sandpipers plus shovelers and blue-winged teal. To get to Rankin Bottoms from Waynesville, take I-40 west to exit 432 B. That will put you on U.S. 25/70. Follow U.S. 25 east out of Newport to Rankin Hill Road (I would estimate about five miles, but I have never measured it). Follow Rankin Hill Road to the railroad crossing. At the crossing take Hill Road to the left and follow it to the bottoms.

But even if you can’t sneak away to the Parkway or Caesar’s Head or Ranking Bottoms, you can find migrants by just being aware. As I sat down today (Sun. 9/18) to write this column, I noticed some movement in one of the dogwood trees out my window. I went outside to find a small flock of thrushes stuffing themselves with the bright red berries. In about half an hour from my deck and back yard I counted more than 20 species of birds. There were three different thrushes in the yard – Swainson’s, wood and gray-cheeked. I saw six different species of warblers — black-and-white, magnolia, worm-eating, hooded, black-throated blue and Tennessee. Rose-breasted grosbeaks, scarlet tanagers, gray catbirds and year-round residents like Carolina chickadee and tufted titmouse rounded out the list. Migration will soon be over till spring, but right now, there’s still time.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)