February Afternoon at Lake Tomahawk
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We’ve been having an up-and-down winter in our neck of the woods, how about you? Some days are warm, others are cold, rain here, flurries there…our spring flowers are so confused!
Tag Archives: birding
North Carolina Mountain Birds: Carolina Chickadee
| Chickadee outside the solarium at the Inn on Mill Creek |
January is a fairly unpredictable month in the mountains of Western North Carolina. One day, we’ll see bright sunshine and temperatures in the 40s or 50s, then blustery temps the following day with snow. So we’re countering the month’s unpredictable nature with a very predictable bird for our latest installment of 12 Months of Birding at the Inn: the Carolina Chickadee.
North Carolina Mountain Birds: Dark-eyed Junco
North Carolina Mountain Birds: Wild Turkey
| Wild Turkey checks out the orchard at the Inn on Mill Creek |
We’ve picked the Wild Turkey as the November bird for our 12 Months of Birding series. We see Wild Turkeys at the Inn on Mill Creek quite frequently…they seem to be big fans of our apple orchard. As year-round residents, Wild Turkeys enjoy scattered open spaces in Pisgah National Forest (like our orchard) and feast on acorns, fruit, insects and fern fronds, all of which are in good supply here.
North Carolina Mountain Birds: Pileated Woodpecker
Our 12 Months of Birding series continues this month with the Pileated Woodpecker. The Pileated Woodpecker is a large bird who lives year-round in Pisgah National Forest that surrounds the Inn on Mill Creek. In particular, they love the woods just behind our fruit orchard and if you sit on the swing at the Inn for a little while, you can often hear their bold, striking calls, which match their striking looks. (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology defines the Pileated Woodpecker’s call as “whinnying”.)
North Carolina Mountain Birds: Tufted Titmouse
We’ve decided to do a 12 Months of Birding at the Inn series on the blog, where we’ll talk about the kinds of birds you can expect to see at the Inn on Mill Creek (a site on the North Carolina Birding Trail) and in the surrounding areas of the North Carolina mountains. We’ve also taken lots of pictures over the years of the birds in our neck of the woods, and unless photo credit is attributed to someone else, all photos on the blog are ones that we’ve taken of our winged neighbors.
Blue Ridge Birding Weekend, September 7-9, 2012
Bed & Breakfast… and Birds
The weather has warmed up enough that we’re back to serving in the sunny solarium at breakfast! Here are recent guests Lisa, Mike, Clarke, Marsha, Kathleen, Pat, Carol and Sandy enjoying Dave’s frittatas and Pisgah National Forest:
Great Backyard Bird Count 2011
It’s time for the annual Great Backyard Bird Count! The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is the opportunity for bird enthusiasts of all ages — from casual bird watchers to serious birders — to participate in a massive counting of birds over a four-day period in the U.S. and Canada. Scientists then use the data from to study bird populations, what kinds of birds live in different areas, the environmental effects on bird migration patterns and how a species’ range shrinks or expands over a period of time.
