After the Deluge April always delivers a few wicked cold fronts. Last night we had heavy rain, strong winds but fortunately no tornadoes (Greensboro did). I went over to Lake Crabtree in search of shorebirds, who often show up in the flooded grassy areas after a storm, and warblers, the special treats of April/May. A…
Prairie Ridge Exercise more than birds got me outside today. I have been reading the migration reports at BirdCast and looking at the weather forecasts and it appears things will get rockin’ by Friday. In the meantime, I need the practice, having not been birding very much this past month or two….
Merchants Millpond State Park We loaded Puff up, plopped the kayaks on the car roof, and took off for a few days of Eastern North Carolina blackwater kayaking. We went to the swamp. It had been over 20 years since my last visit to Merchants Millpond. Back then the park was just being established, with zero…
Winds from the south, finally. Over the past month, I have become a wind watcher. It seems to me that many birds have been struggling to get up into the Upper Peninsula due to almost constant northerly winds. But at the same time, the foliage is not out much, and the insects that many warblers…
Oh boy, WHERE is Spring? After a few days of teasingly nice spring days, the UP went into refrigerator mode over the weekend. I jokingly told Sheree’ I was ready to fly home to North Carolina, where it was edging into the nineties. Aha! There is the problem, too hot down there. I’ll wait it…
(It is July 29, and I just now realized this never got posted back in June – welcome to the COVID Zone) We are making the best of it during these tumultuous times. I don’t want to use WPWB as a place to discuss topics outside of wild places or wild birds but these are…
Going on ten years, our annual Thanksgiving trip to birding hotspots of northeastern North Carolina provided great weather, magnificent birds, and great scenery. Scott and I took off down Hwy 64 on Wednesday for Nags Head, making birding stops along the way. Sheree was delayed by a sick puppy and would join us the next…
Drive to McCormick Wilderness Headed west Sunday morning to look for some unique birds (Boreal Chickadee and Canada Jay) in the beautiful autumn forests of the Upper Peninsula. The first thing I noticed, cars coming from the west had SNOW on them. October 13 must be the first day of winter in the U.P. The…
Remembering from two years ago This blog posting has been on the back burner for quite a while, but it was such an enjoyable birding experience, it deserves posting. Sheree’ gifted the guided experience to Scott and I. She’s good at that! The science behind bird banding, and geotagging in general, is so exciting, so…
Just three weeks until I journey north, really north, up to the UP of Michigan. We will be settling into our new house in Marquette, Michigan over the next few months and I will work part-time for the Nature Conservancy. We are trying to visit all of our family before we go, which brings us…
Spring walk down the river and up on the dam Some days it is nice to bird on a paved path, so I drove over to the Neuse River Greenway near the dam and headed south for about 2 miles. Granted, I arrived a bit late, after 8 a.m., but was pleased to find a…
Heading north…. After some solo trips, and a few overnighters together, this trip would be our first multi-day multi-campsite adventure. As we continue learning about teardrop camping, we continue to make small adjustments and improvements. On this trip, we developed a better food plan, managed our refrigeration better, and agreed our bedding needed upgrading….
Take me to the land of cooler temperatures, longer twilights, and starier skies. As I sit here in Hartwick State Park, Michigan, beginning to write this travelogue, grey clouds of the stormy variety are sliding in on the cusp of a cold front from Canada. It is warm, but the breeze washes away some of the…
Puff, Puff, Puff The big test. I wondered since before purchasing our T@B trailer, “how will it perform in the mountains behind a Subaru Outback 4cyl?”. As will be normal on most trips, I ran with no water in the tanks and minimal “stuff” in the trailer. The approach to Asheville N.C. begins at Old…
Most of my 20 hours each week were filled with peace and solitude Allow me to preface that first title and embellish it as well. Born in New York just north of NYC, I spent my entire adult life in North Carolina. In the spring of 2019, we, my wife Sheree’ and I purchased a…
Hot, Quiet, and Ugly Birds! Summer Yard Birding (click links for audio)I miss New York summers, the lower humidity, cooler nights, a summer breeze. And, when I watch our birds and squirrels flatten themselves on the wet ground in the yard, I suspect they would miss it as well. For the past 20 some years…
Summer Birds in Ohio and Michigan Birding was not the focus of this trip but we had some success none the less. Most of the notable birds were seen near Barbeau, MI. The Black-backed Woodpecker was a target of ours that we located while picking blueberries, deep in the Hiawatha National Forest. Sheree’ had the…
A quick March afternoon walk I have had this area on my list for a while, but alas, I could not seem to get up here until today. I was not prepared for a 3.7-mile hike but enjoyed it none the less. This area, especially near the river, has great potential, and I can’t…
Go fly a KITE! On a family trip to Savannah, I saw the opportunity to get my Georgia list cranked up (currently at 21). Well, little did I know, most of the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge is in South Carolina. No worries, with low expectation July birding, my son, Patrick, and I, managed some nice views,…
Presque Isle, Marquette, Michigan In what might be labeled the first real signs that the short Autumn season is coming to a close, Lake Superior became a bowl of rolling and smashing water today, October 15, 2019. It was the biggest gale so far for this Yankee Southerner, and I was duly impressed. The winds…
From the Wetmore parking area, I hiked up the Beagle Road Trail, which led to the Who Cooks For you Trail, and eventually up to Bareback Mountain. It was a bit rugged but, as usual, the views were worth the hard work. Harlow Lake The hike down was very enjoyable with beautiful vistas of the…
After partially relocating almost half of our living quarters to Upper Michigan, we have spent the past few months back in North Carolina, our home for many decades. Over the past ten years, we have made a tradition of visiting the awesome birding locations in the northeast coastal plain of North Carolina, including Alligator River,…
Learning the Hotspots Well, I made it UP! In the heart of the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, now it’s time to immerse my southern-ness into the hotspots of Marquette, that is birding hotspots, of course. Even without a truckload of stuff to unload there has been so much to do settling into the house, so,…
Bird Camping Falls Lake We parked our teardrop trailer at Rollingview SRA campground for a long weekend. It was really nice sitting outside listening to the birds say goodnight, followed by a wake-up call good morning the next day. Our site was above a small intermittent stream that attracted some nice birds and amphibians, including Parula…
Fayette State Park, an abandoned iron smelting town, was on our short list of places to visit in the UP (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) for many months. Over the past three years, I have come to understand the significant economic, cultural, and environmental impact that the mining and processing of iron has had on the…
October 2, 2016 Making the effort to get more exercise, I took a bike and bird trip down the Neuse River Trail. My reward was a Black-billed Cuckoo. The Neuse River Trail is a 33-mile (53 km) long paved greenway located in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, running along the banks of the…
Better late than….. On February 24 I hooked Puff up and took off for the coast. I had not been to the coast since Thanksgiving when Sheree’, Scott Davis and I did our annual birding adventure. This was the first winter trip in years, albeit late in the season. Although numbers were down I did quite…
Leaving North Carolina Up at the crack of dawn, I jumped into the already loaded Outback and towed Puff out the driveway onto Olive Branch Road. I had loaded up everything I thought would be needed at the new house, like my camera, kayaks, hiking boots, bird manuals. The usual stuff one needs to get…
Before I get into how marvelous Magee Marsh is, allow me to share some birding on the way north, at Pilot Mountain State Park (NC) and Salt Fork State Park in Ohio. Pilot Mountain State Park We arrived at Pilot Mt. State Park late afternoon. Birds were relatively quiet around the parking area. It was a…
Bird Migration in Michigan As I enter my first week of June, ever, in the UP, and Marquette, MI., the birds are still flowing in, with some moving on to the north. Admittedly, I am surprised at the late arrival of birds here compared to North Carolina, but then it makes perfect sense as well….
I had great expectations on birding from Nags Head to Litchfield Beach, S.C., but Mother Nature had other plans. Hurricane Maria was just strong enough to get me kicked off Hatteras and forced to use the land route to Beaufort, but it was an adventure nonetheless. On future trips, I plan to take more notes…
Well, that was quite a blogging break I took, but now I am ready to rock and roll. There will be some big changes in the coming months, both in my life as well as here at Two Talons Up. More on that another day. Sheree and I took an unplanned trip down to Pine…
Hi all, Sheree and I took off Saturday, April 1 for a six-day spring break trip. Sheree drove the Outback and I drove ye ol pick-up, pinball machine riding in the back. A very nice day except for the pouring rain on the way down from Durham. We spent a nice afternoon with Corey and Joanna, delivering the pinball…
