Tag: Southern Appalachian Creature Feature
The content below has been tagged with the term “Southern Appalachian Creature Feature.”
Podcasts
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Blackburnian warbler. Photo Tim Lenz, CC BY 2.0.Warblers
June 26, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature Warblers, warblers, warblers. If you spend much time around birders in the Southern Appalachians, they seem to get really excited about warblers. While the term warblers is used to describe different groups of birds around the world, in North America it almost always refers to members of the family parulidae, also called New World warblers. There are dozens of North American warblers, most of which are insect eaters, and in our region they can be found in a variety of habitats, from the grasslands of the Southern piedmont, to the spruce-fir forests atop Appalachia’s highest mountains. Learn more...
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Eastern small-footed bat. Photo by Gary Peeples, USFWS.
Eastern small-footed bats
June 19, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. During the winter of 2006-2007, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission biologists examining a mine in Haywood County found 109 eastern small-footed bats, the largest known hibernation colony of this species in the southeast. A return to the mine in the winter of 2007-2008 turned up just 56 bats, though it’s quite possible the bats shifted to an inaccessible part of the mine. Learn more...
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Ginseng flower forming. Photo by Courtney Celley, USFWS.
Day of the frog
June 12, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. March at my daughter’s preschool, is reptiles and amphibians month. There is a bit of pride when someone asks my daughter what she’s studying at school and she says “Reptiles and amphibians.” At one level, the pride comes simply from hearing my three-year old say a word like amphibians. Of course, there’s a deeper pride when she begins to name the distinguishing traits of the vertebrate classes – fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Learn more...
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Rock gnome lichen
June 5, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. An untrained eye would be completely oblivious to its presence. It would look nearly indistinguishable from the other lichens growing on the high, exposed rock face, and you would never know you were looking at an endangered species. The rock gnome lichen is one of only two lichens on the federal list of threatened and endangered species and is found exclusively in the Southern Appalachians. Learn more...
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Ragweed, bane of noses, boon to wildlife
May 29, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. Few plants are as reviled as ragweed, whose pollen carries the blame for the spring-time sinus suffering of thousands, if not millions, of Americans. Of course that just reflects our human bias. If you were a songbird, you might have different feelings. At least six different species of ragweed are found in the United States. They’re pioneer species - sun-loving plants that are the first to move in once an area has been cleared. Learn more...
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Crow. Photo by Clint Lalonde, CC BY-NC 2.0.
Clever crows
May 22, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. The common crow is found across the continental United States, except for the arid southwest, and has easily found a place in developed areas. Although crows may get a bad rap by many, they’re fascinatingly clever animals, exhibiting a range of behaviors we wouldn’t expect from a bird. Their main predators are raptors, and when feeding in a group they’ll often post sentinels to keep an eye out while the other members of the group eat. Learn more...
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Herring gull. Photo by Tim Lenz, CC BY 2.0.
Gulls in the mountains and across America
May 15, 2009 | 1 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. At the entrance to Isothermal Community College is a small reservoir with a resident group of ducks, often a few Canada geese, and on a recent day, a group of gulls. Most of us are familiar with gulls as noisy beach dwellers, opportunistically searching for that next bit of stale bread or discarded potato chip. However, not all gulls are coast dwellers. Learn more...
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Bat with white nose syndrome symptoms. Photo by Sue Cameron, USFWS
White nose syndrome, a fatal bat condition, spreads
May 8, 2009 | 3 minute read
Transcript Good morning and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. This week, we’ll look at a mysterious condition killing thousands of bats in the Northeast that biologists hope to keep from spreading to the Southern Appalachians. Last winter, biologists found several thousand dead bats in caves around Albany, New York. A majority of the dead bats had a white fungal growth on their noses, giving the condition the name white nose syndrome. Learn more...
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Peregrine falcon. Photo by Tonys Takes, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The peregrine falcon celebrates ten years off the endangered species list
May 1, 2009 | 1 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. 2009 marks the 10-year anniversary of the removal of the peregrine falcon, the world’s fastest bird, from the national threatened and endangered species list. Key players in the falcon’s continued success are rock climbers. In the Southern Appalachians, peregrines nest on the high, broad cliff faces that are also popular with climbers. However, disturbance during nesting season can cause adult falcons to abandon a nest or spook young birds out of the nest before they can fly, essentially plummeting to their death. Learn more...
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The DOE/Sandia Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) facility at the Reese Technology Center in Lubbock, Texas. Photo by Sandia Labs, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Research shows it isn’t just impacts that kill bats at wind turbines
April 24, 2009 | 2 minute read
Transcript Greetings and welcome to the Southern Appalachian Creature Feature. While many hold up wind energy as an ideal green energy source, many in the wildlife conservation community are a little hesitant with their enthusiasm. The reason being, those spinning blades can be lethal to flying animals. Much of the attention about wind turbine impacts to wildlife has focused on birds, but clearly birds aren’t the only animals that fly, and bats have suffered before those spinning blades as well. Learn more...
