This time of year, as winter settles in, nature can seem quiet, even boring. Most plants have shed their leaves and gone dormant and much of the fauna have migrated south or hunkered down for a long winter’s nap.
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Nature
Wild Ideas: Winter settles in?
Letter: Join the Nature Camp community
Are you 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 years old? If so, this article is for you. We would like you to join our community this summer at the Rappahannock Nature Camp!
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Letter: Thanks for letting us keep up with Jones (and other neighbors)
Rappahannock News reporter Alex Sharp VIII did a nice job on the advance of the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection (RLEP) talk by our Long Mountain Road neighbor Bruce Jones. Bruce and Susan Jones are truly dedicated to the ideals of life in the county. The public talk is proof that RLEP is doing...
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‘Intricate Relationships’ matter
The perpetual friction between “come-heres” and “from-heres” in Rappahannock County is not limited to humans. Homegrown naturalist Bruce Jones speaks on ways to bring native flora and fauna back home.
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Clark Hollow Ramblings: It ain’t so. It just ain’t so.
I have been reading with some interest the issue of lead poisoning in our bald eagle population. First, I can’t tell you how glad I am that the bald eagles have taken up residency here, or returned here, whichever is the case. They are absolutely so majestic I am glad Ben Franklin didn’t get his way...
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Wild Ideas: Making mole hills in the mountains
While bunnies, bears, mice and myriad other animals were main characters in my childhood storybooks, only the “Wind in the Willows” featured the lowly mole. That just fed my curiosity about this mysterious animal, so one day I followed a mole tunnel and dug up its engineer. The creature looked like no other I’d...
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Letter: Get the lead out of hunting ammunition
Last week’s article on the bald eagle killed by lead poisoning in Fauquier County – as well as news of a second eagle in Manassas that died of the same cause – is a sharp reminder of the need to get the lead out of hunting ammunition. Lead left in the gut piles of...
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Photos: A glimpse of winter
Kevin Adams, co-owner of the Gay Street Inn, caught a full moon settling over Massies Mountain just west of Little Washington at 7:30 Tuesday morning, the ground still white from an unexpected storm that began Monday afternoon (when the photo below of the county courthouse was taken), and which produced more than two inches...
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Letter: If it’s hunters’ lead, why no dead vultures?
Regarding your Jan. 12 article reprinted from the Fauquier Times-Democrat: I find it to be a long stretch to blame hunters for the problem. The article, in quoting the Wildlife Center senior executives, makes it sound as if hunters are such a sorry lot that large amounts of...
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Lead said to be poisoning eagles
This story doesn't have a happy ending.
On Dec. 29, a Virginia conservation officer from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries rescued a bald eagle and brought it to the Wildlife Center in Waynesboro.
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Photo: Bald eagle at Rose Hill
Claudia Ross at Rose Hill Farm, on U.S. 211 not far from the town of Washington, took this telephoto shot on Wednesday (Jan. 4) of a bald eagle checking out the meadow nearby. Ross said the bird was “easily three feet tall” and, when she tried to get closer, “he vanished in such a...
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Letter: ‘This is not hunting — this is killing’
I have been a resident of Rappahannock County for eight years now and I love being here; I love waking up in the morning to take my dogs for a walk, smelling the fresh air, hearing the geese fly overhead and seeing the many wild animals that grace this beautiful countryside. I have a...
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Wild Ideas: The grapes of repast
Winter keeps coming in fits and starts, and our migratory birds here in the Blue Ridge seem in no rush to keep moving south. Some of these lagging migrants have been taking advantage of a late-fruiting vine that’s festooning the crown of a small tree near my house. A couple of cedar waxwings – one...
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Wild Ideas: Indian summer brings out the critters
We’re not the only ones who enjoy Indian summer. Animals that seemed to have gone into hibernation suddenly pop up everywhere, taking advantage of another chance to put on fat before winter really sets in.
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Ted Pellegatta: photos, with feeling
Ted Pellegatta has worn a lot of hats in his life. When he’s doing what he loves best, however, he usually has to remove the hat – the brim interferes with the camera. With his new book out, it's time for the rest of to take our hats off.
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SCBI: Making room for leopards, pandas and . . . students
Just two miles downhill from Chester Gap on U.S. 522, some of the world’s most exotic and endangered species are raising families within the heavily secured confines of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal – and they’re about to have company.
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The coyote is ‘here to stay’
That unusual sound you hear after dark in Rappahannock County – between the more familiar bark of distant dogs and the occasional passing plane – could very well be the yip and howl of the eastern coyote.
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Wild Ideas: Identifying fungi, way more fun than eating them
I knew as a kid that toads didn’t actually sit on toadstools (hookah-smoking caterpillars did that), although I did seem to find an awful lot of toadlets sitting under the umbrella tops of some mushrooms. Maybe they were feeding on insects that were eating the mushrooms, or maybe they were seeking shelter from weather...
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Clark Hollow Ramblings: Hawks and other neighbors
Down in the front of our yard, there is a little creek that cuts off one corner, and continues on under the Fodderstack Road. Around that creek, and near the fence with our neighbor, Mrs. Lee, there are several large maple trees. Two red-shouldered hawks have decided that those old maples would be a...
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