[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 06/14/14 (What Is The Piedmont?)

Big news! As I join other U.S. citizens in celebrating the Fourth of July, I also observe another event: The publication of my 600th installment of This Week at Hilton Pond. This anniversary edition returns to the Center's roots in answering the question: What is the Piedmont? and as a bonus

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 04/22/14 (Spring Birds Wildflowers)

As usual we celebrated spring here at Hilton Pond Center and in the mountains of West Virginia, banding birds and looking at wildflowers in the Carolina Piedmont and at the annual New River Birding Nature Festival. Our 22 Apr thru 5 May 2014 installment of This Week at Hilton Pond is a

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 01/22/14

I typically wander my trails by day, but when I do go out at night it's hard to know even with a flashlight if undetected animals are watching me instead. This Week at Hilton Pond I supplemented my human lack of nocturnal vision with the infrared power of a trail cam that revealed all sorts of

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 11/01/13 (Ujarráscals In Costa Ri ca: Hummingbirds Among The Chayote)

The first half of November I was in Costa Rica's Orosi Valley for our 22nd Operation RubyThroat citizen science expedition to the Neotropics. Mist netting and live-trapping operations were centered at Ujarrás, a riverside agricultural community whose cash crop is Chayote--a squash that flowers

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 10/11/13 (Schweinitz's Endangered Sunflower)

Since 2006 I've been following the progress of the Center's solitary specimen of Schweinitz's Sunflower--a federally endangered species that once flourished on the vast Piedmont Prairie. This Week at Hilton Pond our plant had its most prolific bloom ever, even though many of its ray flowers

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 02/13/13 (Hummingbirds in Nicaragua)

Although it took a LONG time (no excuses here, but illness, travel, and banding birds when i returned to Hilton Pond slowed me down a lot!), I just finished my on-line summary of February's Operation RubyThroat hummingbird expedition to Nicaragua. It's a comprehensive report with lots of photos

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 11/01/12 (Hummingbirds Chayote)

Our hummingbird expeditions through Operation RubyThroat last only nine days in the Neotropics, but it seems like it takes forever to process all our photos of flora and fauna, write the text, and compile the data for our requisite on-line report. It's a labor of love, however, and provides a

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Hawk flies into a car and on a driver's lap!

I'd say most hawks DO look for prey while flying--as well as when perching--and it's for sure Golden Eagles do as they soar overhead looking for jackrabbits. Since Red-tailed Hawks can hover, I think they'd be especially adept at spotting prey while on the wing. Hawk banding stations

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 09/10/12 (Belted Kingfisher)

In the wake of that first-cold-front-of-the-fall on 8 September, we ran our mist nets and expected to catch a potful of early migrants. As described last week, that didn't happen but we did make an exciting capture a couple of days later--only the tenth Belted Kingfisher we've ever banded. This

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 08/01/12 (Astronaut Armstrong The Naturalist)

We were deeply saddened this past Saturday to hear about the death of astronaut Neil Armstrong, a man we were lucky enough to meet and learn from early in our science career. This Week at Hilton Pond we stray a bit from our usual natural history theme for a first-person account of time we spent

[ECOLOG-L] New 2012 Hummingbird Expedition to Costa Rica

Ruby-throated Hummingbird numbers are starting to grow in the eastern U.S. right now, but in a couple of months nearly all these little balls of fluff will be down in the Neotropics. Care to follow them to see what they're up to? Week One is full with 12 participants, so we've officially added

[ECOLOG-L] 30th Anniversary Celebration

Please join us in celebrating today as the 30th anniversary of the first bird ever banded at Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History--a female Common Grackle trapped on 28 June 1982. As of this morning at 10:50 a.m. we've caught 899 more grackles and a total of 57,514 birds of 126

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Non-Majors Biology

With sincere respect to all of you in the fields of microbiology, genetics, and other laboratory-based disciplines of the life sciences, I contend the Campbell Essential Biology approach is exactly what is wrong with biology education today. Nearly all undergraduate and high school

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 04/01/11 (Spring Hummer Flowers)

We're often asked what Ruby-throated Hummingbirds eat if they come back in early spring before there's a noticeable flower bloom. Among other things they consume tree sap and tiny insects, but there may be more blossoms out there than you think. This Week at Hilton Pond we've selected five

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 03/19/12 (Signs Of Early Spring)

The month of March 2012 was incredibly warm--both day and night--and Mother Nature seemed to respond. Plants and animals of various species showed activity ahead of what the calendar usually dictates, so there may be some long-term effects. To view our photo essay about this phenomenon and some

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 03/19/12 (Signs Of Early Spring)

and say, Aha, cooling! The data does not support global warming! Martin M. Meiss 2012/4/5 Bill Hilton Jr. (RESEARCH) resea...@hiltonpond.org The month of March 2012 was incredibly warm--both day and night--and Mother Nature seemed to respond. Plants and animals of various species

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 03/10/12 (Hummingbirds In Belize)

As noted previously, it takes a long time to put together each photo essay that summarizes an Operation RubyThroat hummingbird expedition to the Neotropics. Nonetheless, I've just completed the on-line write-up about our third trip to Crooked Tree in Belize and have posted it as our This Week

Re: [ECOLOG-L] spring wildflowers visited by Ruby-throated Hummingbirds?

DAVID . . . My guess is that this may be one of those years when sapsucker wells--those horizontal, sap-oozing holes made by Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers--may be of more importance than usual in the northern part of the ruby-throat's range. (See images at

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 10/11/11 (Ode To Goldenrod)

Each October, one of our favorite natural pastimes is to venture into a patch of Goldenrod to see how many pollinators and predators we can find. This Week at Hilton Pond we located--and photographed--some little arthropods we'd not encountered before, including a spider species we've been

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 08/01/11 (Spiders Of August)

Due to a family medical emergency, we haven't posted This Week at Hilton Pond for a while, but we're back at it now with a photo essay about the Spiders of August. If you think you've got a bad case of arachnophobia, it's time to confront your fears--perhaps by taking a look at the images and

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 05/23/11 (Spring Fancy!)

In spring a young man's fancy may turn, but nature is way ahead of him as far as propagation is concerned. This Week at Hilton Pond we devote our photo essay to the rites of spring among turtles and birds and roadside flowers. For a peek at some of the adaptations that ensure organisms pass

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 03/01/11 (Belize Hummingbirds)

At long last I've checked my notes and processed my photos and put together the third and final write-up about our 2011 Operation RubyThroat hummingbird expeditions to the Neotropics--this time to Belize. The infamous 2011 Hummingbird Jinx that began in Costa Rica and continued in Guatemala

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Red-winged Blackbird Die Off in AR....

The flaw in Evan's friend's argument against the fireworks hypothesis is that there are no big summer (July 4th) concentrations of birds--such as the multi-thousand assemblages of Red-winged Blackbirds, European Starlings, Common Grackles, etc., that occur in winter. I'm sticking with the

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 12/22/10 (House Finch Follow-ups)

After our photo essay last week about possible diminished migration in eastern House Finch populations, we got some great questions and comments from visitors to our Web site. As a result, This Week at Hilton Pond we're revisiting the finch topic with some follow-up information about

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 09/11/10 (Summer Tanagers)

With the autumnal equinox arriving at 11:09 p.m. yesterday, 21 September was the last FULL day of summer, so it seemed only appropriate our final birds banded that day were SUMMER Tanagers. One was a brilliantly plumaged adult male, the other a more cryptically colored bird that required closer

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 08/27/10 (Mt. Cuba Center DE)

Many folks don't realize the Carolinas encompass only a small part of the Piedmont, which stretches all the way from southern New York to central Alabama. We've just returned from the upper end of the region in northern Delaware, where we held our final Hummingbird Mornings event of 2010 at Mt.

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 08/01/10 (Land Between the Lakes)

Hummingbirds must like it hot, for there were tons of them in sweltering 90-degree-plus weather at Land Between the Lakes this week when we went out for annual Hummingbird Festival at Woodlands Nature Station in Kentucky. We did see lots of hummers--including one with an interesting foot

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 07/22/10 (Midsummer Hummer)

Although we've been away from home a bit--think the cool mountains of North Carolina and West Virginia--we still had time to catch a few Ruby-throated Hummingbirds This Week at Hilton Pond. For a discussion of our midsummer lull--plus a possible answer to a perplexing hummingbird

Re: [ECOLOG-L] fixing peer review - elegant new proposal and petition

One way to handle that would be to put an expiration date on PubCreds, perhaps 24 months. Heaven forbid it should all lead to a system of reviewers who would review the quality of reviews. :-) BILL On Jul 22, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Amartya Saha wrote: Its a good idea; however there is a

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 04/08/10 (Hummingbirds Citizen Science)

Although migrant Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have been back in the Carolinas for at least a couple of weeks, people elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada have contacted us about when to expect their first hummers; thus, our latest edition of This Week at Hilton Pond includes a North American

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 03/22/10 (Boxes for Bluebirds, etc.)

Although some female Eastern Bluebirds are already sitting on eggs here in the Carolina Piedmont, we still see pairs roaming about looking for suitable nest sites. From this we conclude it's not yet too late to build and put up new nest boxes--especially in more northerly parts of the species'

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 02/22/10 (Costa Rica Pollinators)

Although some folks seem to think all pollination is conducted by Honey Bees, many other organisms from butterflies to bats play a role in carrying pollen from one flower to the next. As part of our study of Ruby-throated Hummingbird behavior in Central America, we're interested in whether this

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 02/15/10 (Costa Rica Portfolio)

Really big hummingbirds, treetop monkeys, colorful flowers and fruits, lizards and snakes, and even a unusual Costa Rican election strategy. All this (and more) makes up Part Two of the report on our 2010 Operation RubyThroat hummingbird banding expedition to Guanacaste Province CR. To view our

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 12/22/09 (Christmas Bird Count)

As the holiday season arrives, we're always involved in compiling results of the York/Rock Hill Christmas Bird Count, so that's the topic of the 22-28 December 2009 installment of This Week at Hilton Pond. Our final numbers weren't all that great, but we did manage to get a few photos of birds

[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 11/18/09 (Hummingbird Records)

Did your Ruby-throated Hummingbirds arrive slowly in 2009? Did you think you might have your worst year ever for hosting these little balls of fluff at backyard feeders? Did ruby-throats finally arrive with a vengeance in late summer? If so, you had something in common with our banding efforts

[ECOLOG-L] Allelopathy in oaks

Various sources indicate some species of oak may be allelopathic toward understory and shrub layer vegetation. Is anyone aware of work demonstrating that Willow Oak, Quercus phellos, is allelopathic--especially on Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida? Thanks in advance, BILL RESEARCH