Wildlife Preparing for Winter: Reptiles
Snakes, lizards, and turtles all call the Blue Ridge Mountains home, but these animals are rarely seen in the cold. So, where do reptiles go during winter?
Pre-Order Your Fall Naturalist Rally T-Shirt!
Our Mount Rogers Fall Naturalist Rally is a little over a month away and we could not be more excited! We have opened pre-orders for the limited edition Fall Naturalist Rally t-shirt.
The Early Bird Catches the Worm
This early bird has arrived in Southwest Virginia and searching your fields and lawns for worms.
Irruption of the Pine Siskin
If you have not been fortunate enough to see a Pine siskin, this is the year to look! This is one of the biggest irruption years in recorded history for these finches.
Goatsuckers
Inappropriately named, nighthawks are not as nocturnal as once thought nor are they related to hawks.
The Secret Life of Our American Treecreeper
The brown creeper (Certhia americana) is a bizarre bird. If you’re not looking for them, they are virtually invisible against the craggy bark of large trees.
Mountain Boomer
You may wonder why this small tree squirrel has caught my attention and is now being shared in writing
Color in the field!
As spring rains give way to warm, sunny days, the meadows of Mount Rogers come to life with the emergence of a plethora of insects. Among these creatures is a beetle with a striking iridescent blue body and a yellow-orange wash across its elytra (forewings).
Bald Eagles Nesting in Grayson County
BRDC staff recently visited the site of Grayson county's nesting bald eagles. The nest site was discovered in 2015 in a somewhat remote section of the New, with a cattle farm on one side and a steep forested slope on the other.
Wood Frogs Calling
Have you heard a strange turkey-sounding frog call?
Wood frogs, Lithobates sylvaticus, are adapted to the cold, appearing very early in the year and mating quickly, with all eggs laid in the course of a few days.
Turkeys Have a Reason to be Thankful Today
You wouldn’t think that turkeys have much reason to be thankful given their place as the centerpiece of Thankgiving dinner, but since their decline to near extinction in the 1930's, turkeys in the Blue Ridge are a wildlife management success story.
Copperhead or Not?
On a recent bike ride along the New River Trail in VA I was more or less in auto-pilot and was paying less attention to my surroundings than I should have. My biking companion Mason suddenly shouted that he had run over a copperhead! I was shocked that I had been so careless to have not noticed the rare snake and also doubted that it was really a copperhead.
Creature Feature: Spicebush Swallowtail
A stand of Spicebush along the creek results in an abundance of Spicebush Swallowtails Papilio troilus flying low and fluttering their wings while they feast on summer's abundant flowers.
Hyla Versicolor, the Grey Tree Frog
The June woods are alive at night with the call of Hyla versicolor, Grey Tree Frogs. They breed from April to August, with males gathering in trees near water and calling to the females.
Canadian migrant arrives early on the New River
With the arrival of August it seems that summer is almost over, most birds have finished breeding, and cooler weather must be coming soon. But one of the surest signs of the approaching end of summer is the first arrival of migrating birds that breed in the far north.
Human beings (Homo sapiens)
This is more of a subjective piece…how could it not be…but before we get ahead of ourselves, the inspiration behind it is the Mount Rogers Naturalist Rally where and when we, as humans focused on the natural history of our Blue Ridge, celebrate our love for our fellow creatures great and small. We come together not as exploiters, but explorers…a somewhat atypical behavior of Homo sapiens.
Golden-winged Warbler
The golden-winged warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera) is a challenged species on at least two levels. Its preferred habitat of wet, brushy, early successional open areas with available perching trees is disappearing, which has contributed to the decline of this species, placing it in the ‘species of concern’ category by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.