Blackpoll Warblers in Swoope
Blackpoll Warblers came to the trees in our yard this week. They’re on their way to the boreal forests of Canada. I don’t know a lot of people that have seen a Blackpoll Warbler and when I mention them I get funny stares – I’m a birder.
Butcher Birds Sighted in Swoope
This past week we saw for the first time in over a year a very rare and imperiled bird in Virginia: the Loggerhead Shrike, Lanius ludovicianus. The genus name is Latin for butcher and Shrike is a derivative of shriek. The bird doesn’t really have a pretty song, it shrieks. It...
A Phenological Event: The Spring Surge of Swoope and the Arrival of Tree Swallows
“Good Oak” Revisited 2012
Aldo Leopold wrote eloquently about an ancient log he placed on the andirons of his fire in A Sand County Almanac published in 1949. The chapter was “Good Oak”. Below is my lament for a log I placed on the andirons of a fire we had in the summer kitchen...
Doing Our Part on Middle River
I just came back from a walk along our part of the river. It’s called Middle River and it’s one of the most polluted rivers in Virginia. Just six miles up the river from here is its source – a spring that just bubbles up out of the ground in...
