Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

The sun was already out by the time I arrived at the beach. A warm breeze wafted over the greenbrier ( Smilax rotundifolia ) tangles along the shores of Bogue Banks while a sweet perfume of nectar hung gently in the air near the shrubs where towhees and mockingbirds hid chattering. I sniffed the air; if only I could fully smell it. Having a cold really puts a damper on experiencing the outdoors especially when breathing is kinda of important for one's survival. Wrinkling my nose and blinking sun-sore eyes, I scoured the nearby bushes for any signs of butterflies that had been moving through the past few days. Initially, nothing moved. Perhaps I had come too early or maybe it was too breezy for these colorful insects. I glanced over the beach and noticed a squadron of brown pelicans ( Pelecanus occidentalis ) and infantry of laughing gulls ( Leucophaeus atricilla ) bombarding a school of fish in the surf zone. Over and over, I saw feathery missiles diving in the crystal blue wat...

As fall draws closer, migration is in full swing with birds, dragonflies, and butterflies traveling hundreds of miles to reach wintering grounds along the coast, towards the interior, or even further south towards Mexico and South America. At the Trinity Center, some of our most noticeable migrants are yellow-bellied sapsuckers, cloudless sulphur butterflies and,  green darner dragonflies . Animal migration is triggered by several factors including seasonal changes, food availability, and reproductive needs. During this time of year, I keep my eyes peeled to look out for these incredible travelers, allowing me to catch a glimpse of an important event in Nature’s calendar. Sapsucker and bluebird at Stony Brook-Millstone Preserve in Pennington, NJ. Photo by me.  Yellow-bellied sapsuckers ( Sphyrapicus varius ) are common winter residents to the pine forests of coastal North Carolina. While their name is certainly creative, they don’t exactly suck sap. As a member of t...

It's amazing how spending a little time outside can revitalize your sense of well being. For me, nothing makes me happier than when I'm birding. Being able to spend time with birds is necessary for my well being as a human being, they speak to my very soul. That said, after spending a week on the Bogue Banks, I knew I needed to start finding hotspots to check out. While the Outer Banks is a prime migratory stopover for shorebirds, getting there can be difficult especially if you haven't gotten a handle on the ferry schedule yet. For my purposes starting out, the closest and easiest to reach was the public beach access at Bogue Inlet in Emerald Isle, NC. Finding the beach access was easy enough, but finding adequate parking was trickier. Like many towns with beachfront property, parking on the sides of roads is prohibited with limited opportunities to find free parking unless you are within proximity of a business district or public beach lot. Initially, the only lot I c...

It's the middle of the summer (although some might argue that the middle of the summer would be around August 6th) and the lull before migration is weighing in. There have been a few bright spots such as the recent sighting of that Red-necked Stint ( Calidris ruficollis ) in Parker River NWR and at Edwin B. Forsythe NWR, as well as the many Little Gulls ( Hydrocoloeus minutus ) dotted around the Atlantic coast and Great Lakes. With my other computer in less than perfect condition, I have to rebuild my bird list from scratch, starting with the difficult decision to scrap all bird records without sufficient dates. I know I've seen them before, but I don't know when. As a result, I have no better recollection of what I might have seen and what I might not have seen and as a result, the numbers on the list will suffer. This does throw the goal of 350 birds into jeopardy as well and at the moment, I'll have to see what the list looks like without those dateless species fi...

After experiencing the high of finding so many warblers over the past few days, not finding anything this morning at Heard's Conservation Land was certainly disappointing, but it was made up for it by seeing a family of Northern Flickers ( Colaptes auratus ) I recognized from earlier in the summer. Even though I've only starting concentrating on warblers in the past two weeks or so, I've already run into some problems in regards to correctly identifying species (provided they don't give me "warbler neck" first or in my attempts to follow their flitting and twitching through the understory causes me to fall backwards down a hill I already had trouble climbing to begin with.) This also includes the usual issues with timing, weather, habitat choice, and of course, luck. This past week or so, I've experienced the joy of mistaking Blackpoll Warblers ( Setophaga striata ) with everything else that possesses wingbars (a feature that still annoys me in regards t...