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Hummingfish and Swami-Swans



On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Gary Phillips wrote:
> 
> "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get
> better. It's not." (Dr. Seuss, "The Lorax")

Hi Carolinabirders,

Last Sunday the DNHS took a trip to Hemlock Bluffs. The birding was 
average; Hairy Woodpecker probably the high point, a Northern Parula 
singing. We spent most of the trip looking at fungi, which were abundant 
and diverse; also some very young Five-Lined Skinks and Eastern Fence 
Lizards, and an assortment of interesting plants and insects. Our 
progress was so slow (as usual, for that group) that in over two hours 
there, we never reached the parts with the Hemlocks!

One of my fellow grad students was very excited to find that the above- 
cited book, "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss, was available in the visitor center 
bookstore. She hails from Seattle, and apparently it's very hard to find 
it out there, because the timber industry - afraid of the pro-tree 
attitude that the book cultivates - has convinced most bookstores in the 
region not to sell it. Now THAT's frightening. Remind me not to move to 
the Pacific NW anytime soon...

On Monday, I accompanied my fiance to an interview for an internship at 
the NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill (she's now their new native plants 
intern!). A multitude of female/immature Ruby-throated Hummingbirds 
there, visiting feeders much more than flowers as far as I could tell. 
Not so many leps, 5 or so skipper species and one big dark swallowtail, 
but amazing numbers and variety of wasps and other pollinating insects.

In other tangentially bird-related news, I read from an on-line 
conservation news service that the USF&WS is probably going to list the 
Golden Sedge, Carex lutea, as endangered. The species was only discovered 
a few years ago, and is known only from the North Carolina coast, eight 
populations in the Cape Fear basin in Onslow and Pender counties. It 
apparently grows mainly in and around pine savannahs, so the main bird 
beneficiaries of its protection would be Bachman's Sparrow, maybe 
Henslow's, and associated species. Red-cockaded Woodpecker, which also 
likes pine savannahs, is already protected in its own right, of course.

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/