Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week in Christianity. It honors the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem. Palm branches were waved in triumph at his presence and then placed along with cloaks in his path. In ancient times, palm branches were a symbol of goodness, well-being and victory. ...
I don’t think I really appreciated how still and quiet winter was until spring has arrived. Suddenly, without fail, the world explodes with life — children run around their yards screaming or bouncing their basketballs while birds buzz and chirp in the trees nearby. Overnight the world ...
At 6:30 p.m. on April 10 Linda and I sat on our patio enjoying a chorus of mockingbirds and song sparrows. Suddenly a familiar buzz caught our attention. The first ruby-throated hummingbird of the season stopped at the nectar feeder. One of the perks of living in North Carolina is that we see migrants well before they return to West Virginia. Coincidentally, just a few days earlier my daughter Emma, who lives in Los Angles, asked me to send her one of my spare nectar feeders. She and three roommates live in a small house that has a lemon tree in the tiny backyard. She had just ...
It’s the beginning of April, and most fish species in Chautauqua Lake are preparing for the spawning season. Black and white crappie, yellow perch, walleye and bass are all beginning to stage at the mouths of Chautauqua Lake’s tributaries. Many fish species will “run” into the ...
As a naturalist at Audubon, I work with kids often. And I hear them say some pretty cool things. I enjoy hearing comments about how cool nature is or about learning something new. But a child saying “I didn’t think I could do that” is my most favorite by far. In that one comment, I ...
Some things are just plain wrong, and there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Last fall my friend, Bill Thompson III, editor and co-publisher of “Bird Watcher’s Digest” (BWD), began feeling poorly. In mid-December he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He was 57 when he died on March 25. Bill’s parents, Elsa and Bill Jr., launched BWD in 1978 as a family business from their home in Marietta, Ohio. Bill, or BT3 as he came to be known, got hooked on birds as a child. After college, he worked a variety of jobs before starting at BWD in 1998. Eventually, ...
