(Creasy greens growing wild beside the road)   Last summer as I was driving north on Rt. 29, I saw a flowering weed beside the road so stunning that I went back to see it again. To the best of my weed-identification abilities, it was a butterfly weed – adorned in the most incredible orange I have ever seen. Since that time, I have been on the lookout for beautiful weeds and … [Read more...]

  The picture above illustrates emphatically that where is a will to survive, nature will find a way. As I mentioned last week, this has been an extraordinarily good year for jonquils. They have spread and they have flourished. Our front yard has produced a particularly bountiful crop this year. More jonquils than ever and they are ever spreading out. But this beats all. Nancy … [Read more...]

  I have never seen jonquils as lovely as this year. We have several patches in our yard that bloomed early. And they are still blooming. One group (that sometimes blooms and sometimes doesn’t) outdid themselves this spring. The flowers are a rich buttercup yellow with bright orange centers. They are simply glorious as they stretch their fragrant blossoms forward to their source, the … [Read more...]

  Some great news concerning the menhaden fishery.  New legislation has been approved by the Virginia House and Senate, which passed bipartisan legislation to transfer the management of Virginia’s menhaden fisheries from the General Assembly to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC). This comes after many years of work by the conservation and angling communities to move management … [Read more...]

By Biologist Sergio Harding   Birds are important. And we should care about what is happening to them. That is the gist of the press surrounding a recent study that estimates that nearly three billion birds have disappeared form North America since the 1970s.   The headlines are meant to grab your attention, regardless of whether you already have an interest in birds. The goal is to … [Read more...]

  On New Year’s Day,  Clifton Joel Hamilton caught a 4-12 spotted bass at Claytor Lake, a state record for this species. A spotted bass looks almost exactly like a largemouth bass, except the mouth is smaller and it’s full of teeth. For several years now, we have been fishing at Lake Norman near Charlotte at family gatherings and caught bass from the dock that were almost like … [Read more...]

  (Photo by Todd Pusser) If you see a herd of deer this time of year, chances are you won’t see many animals with antlers. That’s because the bucks begin to shed their racks around January, but immediately begin to grow new ones. In this month’s Virginia Wildlife, Gerald Almy “sheds” light on finding shedded antlers. A stroll in the woods right now might result in some nice … [Read more...]

  The time for Christmas Bird Counts is upon us and with it comes the first opportunity to document a breeding bird record for the FINAL Atlas field season.  What species starts setting up breeding territories during the months of frigid temperatures, biting winds, sleet, and snow?  Virginia’s largest breeding owl species, the Great-Horned (Bubo virginianus). The Latin name for … [Read more...]

  By Dr. Leonard Lee Rue III   There are three requirements for a buck to become the trophy that most hunters dream about. Number one is food, number two is age and number three is genetics and in just that order. No buck can ever achieve his potential, whatever it might be, without access to an almost unlimited amount of highly nutritious food. No buck can ever achieve his … [Read more...]