Lord Byron’s first meeting with Lady Wilmot Horton at a fashionable party inspired him to compose the poem: She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies Of all that’s best of dark and bright Meet
These iconic falcons have slowly re-established in Virginia after their decimation decades ago from pesticides. This pair of young adults considered nesting under the Chickahominy river bridge, close to the James River. Inge suspects that too much human attention frightened
Ask local folk if mountain lions (aka cougars/ pumas/ panthers) still prowl the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia and you’ll likely get a nod or they might bend your ear to tell a tale. But if you visit the WV
Compared to the handsome storks of Europe in Hans Christian Andersen’s story and those that carried us in a natal cradle, American Wood Storks look like old countrymen with bald, wrinkly heads exposed to too much sun. A featherless head
A week after nightly creaming my face and arms with hydrocortisone I’m still itching. Each exposure makes the reaction worse next time. A few people, including our gardener, are lucky they don’t react to poison ivy, nor wildlife or pets
One of our most popular residents, there is even a Virginia conservation society dedicated to Bluebirds. Someone who grew up locally told that they were uncommon when she was a child. Fifty years ago these cavity nesters had trouble finding
I suspect former neighbors laughed from behind half-drawn curtains: “There’s a weird gardener next door who toils in the midday sun.” But I didn’t care, wearing my green hat with pride and careless if anyone thinks I’m a throwback to
Flycatchers are allies of those who loath mosquitoes and blackflies without spraying their yards. This handsome bird is found east of a north-south line splitting the North American continent in half, and projected to lose western territory and perhaps gain
We weren’t always doggedly efficient extirpators—of insects for eating crops and stinging, of moles for spoiling perfect lawns, of predators for preying on livestock, and so on and on … Not so long ago, humans tolerated annoying wildlife with a
Hummingbirds don’t visit feeders to quench a thirst. They have a taste for sweetness, like us, although different receptors on their tongues (T1R1 + T1R3). Now, we learn that songbirds taste it too. Several avian ancestors emerging in Australia 30
Time flows down Powhatan Creek As I lowered my kayak into the creek, I knew the water wasn’t the same as before, nor am I the same man. Hardly an original thought. People have pondered the river as a metaphor
