Erika describes a chilly, but beautiful night camping in Pisgah National Forest.
Category: students
A Duke Snow Day
Duke students enjoy a rare snow day on campus and in Duke Gardens.
Valentine’s Day Snow Geese
A Valentine’s Day adventure to the Outer Banks in search of Snow Geese.
Searching for Sustainable Socks
Lately I’ve found myself with a conundrum. In short: I needed new jeans and socks, but am looking now for products not only made sustainably, but also fairly, with fair wages and safe working conditions. I was a consumer on a mission, and finding the products I wanted turned out to be easier than I imagined.
Birding Sunrise in Alabama
I have seen a lot of sunsets in my life. My memory is peppered with bright red and gold skies along beaches, on walks home from campus, and across mountaintop vistas, but my experience with sunrises are much more sporadic. A few road trips, early morning flights here and there, but by and large I have missed one half of the world’s most beautiful sunlight displays.
Landscapes of Instagram: Making the Globe a Smaller Place
This morning I woke up, turned on my cell phone, and knew what the sunset looked like in Japan. I saw a European Robin in England, all puffed up against the cold. I looked in awe at snowy peaks in the Himalayas. All without getting out of bed.
Birding Without Borders vs. Birding My Backyard
Recently an adventurous spirit has captured my attention. Every day around noon, I log on to the Audubon website and look for the daily update from Noah Strycker, a 28 year old birder who is trying to see 5,000 species of birds in one year. Given that there are around 10,000 species, that means he aims to see half of all bird species in just 365 days. Exhausting? Yes. Crazy? Yes. Impressive? Yes. And he has inspired me to continue my birding and up my game.
Citizen Science and eButterfly
I’m already an avid user of eBird, a website and app that allow birders from all over the world to record their data, while simultaneously providing a wealth if data to scientists and conservationists. Given it’s importance as a citizen science project, I was thrilled to discover eButterfly, a more recent project with the same goals. Over the winter break I took some time to identify a few of my butterfly photos, and record my first observation.
Maine Moose: An Unexpected Winter Sighting
Moose are an iconic species in Maine. They are the inspiration for thousands of stuffed animal variations, paintings, photographs, sculptures, even chocolate shapes. Yet, they can be difficult to see in the summer, and even more difficult in the winter. In fact, I had never seen a moose between the months of October and May. That is, until this year.
Searching for Snowy Owls Once Again
I ended 2014 and began 2015 in Maine, where temperatures shifted from the warm mid-forties to the bitterly cold single digits. Regardless of the weather however, Maine is always beautiful, and I was lucky enough to spend some time on the rocky coastline, searching for Snowy Owls.