For four days each February, birdwatchers of every skill level can participate in a global event for the love and wellbeing of birds.
Join us October 14th through November 18th (one day per week) for Session II
With all of the wonderful apps available, it is still a good idea to have a shelf of guides to call on. We love paging through them while planning our next exploration, exploring their beautiful illustrations, and carrying our favorites with us for quick reference.
BRDC recently hosted a Primitive Technology course as part of Galax Middle School Enrichment Week. The students were engaged with a variety of hands-on activities that connected them to skills used by early American Indians and materials found in their backyards.
"Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs."
Bald Eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus
On my way to Mouth of Wilson, at around noon, two giant birds caught my eye. I had just crossed over the bridge where Fox Creek empties into the New River. After hitting the brakes and spilling a soda on the floor, I pulled over and watched. The adult eagles were taking turns swooping down, coming within inches of a bird in the water. Every minute or so they would perch on the trees along the south side of the river. A crow passed through, heading upstream, and one eagle dove into hot pursuit. It made chase up to the dam and returned. After diving down at a water bird several more times. I did not make an ID on that bird, but it dove under the water on occasions; cormorant sized, with dark plumage. I noticed at Aviatlas.com that a double-crested cormorant has been spotted near this locality before (during the month of October). 
Bittercress is always the first wildflower by the river bottomland, but the exact species is hard to pin down. Both Pennsylvania bittercress (Cardamine pensylvanica) and hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsute) are small plants with tiny white flowers that bloom when the greens of wild onions are appearing and just before the purple carpet of ground ivy goes wild. Bittercress appears before a more showy mustard family member blankets the hayfields with gold (land cress, Barbarea verna). Spring peepers herald the earlier, white-blooming arrivals, usually the first March evenings after mild days. In many years of informal record keeping, late February is the earliest the amorous males begin calling, but this year the frog song began the second week of March. This past winter we had record-breaking snow and ice cover, for two months even in the lower elevations.
This winter was also unusual with huge ice bergs littering the river side. After a series of river freezes that normally occur when the temperatures dip down into the single digits or lower for a string of days, warm, rainy weather broke up the ice and cast it aside, creating huge ice sculptures on the banks. Most of the ice is gone now in the lower elevations, except for a few north-facing coves. Storm damage was also the worst in many years. Trail crews have been working hard to clear all the blow-downs on the Appalachian Trail, and parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville and Mount Mitchell will be closed until May. None of the trees are leafing out yet, but weeping willow will be the first, soon. A friend reported seeing white hepatica on the Virginia Creeper Trail near Abingdon. Daffodils are blooming and any other earlier bulbs that the deer did not eat. They ate all mine.
Next time: I really wish we could have gotten sharper images,... we pushed the limits of our point-and-shoot camera, that's for certain. Next time, maybe we'll have a dissecting microscope with a camera!
More images of the ice phenomenon, taken along a tributary of the New River:
http://henryreed.com/ice/
