article thumbnail

What is the State Bird of North Carolina?

10,000 Birds

Perhaps it was their flashy color or the males’ tall crest that attracted the legislature to the bird, because in 1943 the Northern Cardinal became the official state bird of North Carolina. To say Northern Cardinals are common is an understatement. A male Northern Cardinal.

article thumbnail

Birding and Butterflying North Carolina Gamelands

10,000 Birds

Still, we are in the midst of spring migration here in North Carolina, and I wasn’t going to let a little cold stop me from seeing some birds. Exploring North Carolina gamelands. Trips butterflies migration North Carolina prairie warbler' My fiance and I arrived at the R.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

Research Animals Rescued from North Carolina Lab

Critter News

An enormous victory was achieved for animals this week when nearly 200 dogs and 54 cats were rescued from a North Carolina animal testing facility that closed its doors after an undercover investigation revealed apparent abuse of the animals by workers at the facility. Their investigations produce results. From the PR Newswire.

article thumbnail

Hungry Osprey in North Carolina

10,000 Birds

While on our beach vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina in early April I took full advantage of our location just off the beach. In the afternoon the sun was at my back and the birds on the beach and over the water were perfectly illuminated for some nice digiscoping opportunities.

article thumbnail

Birding from New York to North Carolina

10,000 Birds

This year, traveling in April instead of February, we decided to do a road trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We broke the drive down into two segments: from New York to Delaware on 31 March and from Delaware to North Carolina on 1 April. Because we all enjoyed our trip so much we might do it again next year!

article thumbnail

73 Arrested for Cockfighting in North Carolina

Critter News

More than 70 people have been arrested in a cockfighting ring that secretly gathered in central North Carolina to watch a $40,000 tournament so gruesome that one of the roosters splattered blood on the investigators' search warrant, authorities said. Disgusting. said in an interview Monday.

article thumbnail

New Species of Salamander from North Carolina - Carolina Sandhills Salamander -

Reddit Animals

submitted by /u/gonefroggin [link] [comments].

article thumbnail

Rarity Roundup Reflections

10,000 Birds

This past weekend I headed out to eastern North Carolina with a group of friends to try our hand at a Rarity Roundup. So it goes with rails in coastal North Carolina. Birding county listing North Carolina rarities rarity roundup' Swamp Sparrows are abundant winter residents in eastern NC.

article thumbnail

Iced Over in the South

10,000 Birds

However, this past weekend I was able to get out for a couple hours to take in a phenomenon that birders in North Carolina have rarely seen of late. The Poler Vortex that has sunk much of the North American continent into the deep freeze has had an effect on us on the margins as well. Trips ducks North Carolina winter'

article thumbnail

On Seeking a Sage Thrasher in the Rain

10,000 Birds

The North Carolina Sage Thrasher on a less challenging day. So, Sage Thrasher in North Carolina! It creeps along, seemingly as frustrated with the rain as those 10 feet away who rapidly attempt to focus binoculars on it and curse at the tangles tripping up camera autofocus mechanisms. Photo by Nathan Gatto.

article thumbnail

eBird Thises and Thats

10,000 Birds

The Great Backyard Bird Count passed relatively uneventfully in North Carolina, and I hear other states/provinces had similarly pedestrian weekends. A little bit of background and North Carolina esoterica now. The Outer Banks are a chain of barrier islands that run down the northeast coast of the state.

article thumbnail

Mountain Swainson’s are the Best Swainson’s

10,000 Birds

I saw my first Swainson’s Warbler in eastern North Carolina, along the Roanoke River near the town of Weldon. I had the pleasure to attend the Carolina Bird Club’s spring meeting in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Birds North Carolina swainson''s Warbler wood-warblers'

article thumbnail

Snowy Owl Invasion!

10,000 Birds

Snowy Owls have been sighted as far south as North Carolina and some locations have as many as seven! Snowy Owl in North Carolina by Nathan Swick. The midwestern and northeastern United States, especially coastal regions and areas along the Great Lakes, is currently experiencing an invasion of Bubo scandiacus.

Owls 111
article thumbnail

Birding Lake Junaluska

10,000 Birds

Lake Junaluska is surrounded by mountains, beautifully situated in scenic Western North Carolina, near the famous Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Birding in front of someone new is always a little nerve-wracking: Will she think I’m weird?

Birds 40
article thumbnail

What makes a Great Patch?

10,000 Birds

Just about every species of bird that had ever been found in the Triangle of North Carolina had been seen at some time or another at Mason Farm. Warblers, thushes and vireos have been slowly piling into North Carolina over the last week. Birding North Carolina Patch Birding'

article thumbnail

Calling all Dogs: Celebrate National Dog Day with Free Ice Cream August 25

4 The Love Of Animals

Best Friends Pet Care is a leading national pet care company and offers boarding, daycare, grooming and training at 42 locations across 18 states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

Dogs 214
article thumbnail

More Federal Stimulus Money Used for Animal Research

Critter News

Tags: animal research Obama University of North Carolina federal stimulus.

article thumbnail

The Self-Refreshing Rarity

10,000 Birds

For the past several weeks a pair of Trumpeter Swans have made themselves at home along a road through Mattamuskeet NWR in eastern North Carolina. I know this for a fact, because this is precisely what I did last week when I spent a day in the eastern part of North Carolina chasing rarities.

article thumbnail

10,000 Birds goes eBirding – Part II

10,000 Birds

There are several states with 100-199 species: North Carolina (172, unchanged), Washington (171, up from 144), Michigan (159, unchanged), Virginia (147, up from 122), North Dakota (141, unchanged), Idaho (129, up from 57); New Mexico (112, unchanged); Massachusetts (110, up from 81); Colorado (106, unchanged), and Pennsylvania (109, up from 102).

Birds 105
article thumbnail

Dickcissels I Never Knew

10,000 Birds

I don’t expect that the rural Piedmont of North Carolina is much different from similar areas across the United States and even the world. It took me a second to make the connection, having not heard it in North Carolina in a couple years at least, and I arrived quickly at Dickcissel. Pretty sweet.

article thumbnail

The One and Only Outer Banks Big Day

10,000 Birds

My friend Paul Taillie and I had to meet an intrepid bunch of birders for the inaugural Outer Banks Big Day field trip at the Wings Over Water festival in eastern North Carolina. We were setting the bar for what someone hitting all the good spots on North Carolina’s famous barrier islands could reasonably accomplish.

article thumbnail

NC BC Chickadees

10,000 Birds

There are some birds I have not seen in North Carolina because they are very rare. There are some birds I have not seen in North Carolina because I have lousy luck. And there are some birds I have not seen in North Carolina because I am kind of a lazy lister. This is the story of the last one.

article thumbnail

Minks and more on the Outer Banks

10,000 Birds

A couple weekends ago I headed out to the Carolina Bird Club’s winter meeting in Nags Head, North Carolina, on the cusp of the Outer Banks. Birding North Carolina Outer Banks' All in all a fun trip. I’ll be back to close out 200 soon.

article thumbnail

North Carolina Court Rules For The Release Of Captive Red Wolves To Save The Last Seven Remaining In The Wild From Extinction

Reddit Animals

submitted by /u/SawOnGam [link] [comments].

article thumbnail

The Burrowing Owl on the Beach

10,000 Birds

This is the second in a however-many-parts-it-takes series about western vagrants showing up on the coast of North Carolina. Back in November a small group of lucky shorebird surveyors found a Burrowing Owl sitting tight on a jetty on the south side of Masonboro Inlet in southeastern North Carolina.

Owls 40
article thumbnail

The Secret Hummingbird

10,000 Birds

Closer examination nailed it down to Buff-bellied Hummingbird , North Carolina’s 2nd record. Not only was it a dynamite bird for the state, but it’s location in the center of North Carolina would make it easy for birders on both sides of the state to get to.

article thumbnail

Twitching Solitaire En Masse

10,000 Birds

But sometimes the stars align perfectly, as they did a couple weeks ago, in the form of North Carolina’s first record of Townsend’s Solitaire. The species has been on my personal radar for North Carolina for years. I’ve taken them on twitches before , but it’s always been a dicey proposition.

article thumbnail

San Diego Pelagic

10,000 Birds

I’ve taken tours out of Monterey Bay (with pelagic legend Debi Shearwater , now retired) and Half Moon Bay, California ; Newport, Oregon ; and Hatteras, North Carolina. But I took a day for myself for a 12-hour pelagic trip sponsored by Buena Vista Audubon.

article thumbnail

Best Bird of the Weekend (Third of February 2019)

10,000 Birds

But at a hotel in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, he had a singing male Eastern Bluebird on Sunday morning, and that was definitely his Best Bird of the Weekend. Corey spent the weekend making his way south to Georgia, where he has now arrived at Tybee Island. How about you? What was your best bird of the weekend?

Birds 51
article thumbnail

Good news for the Wood Stork

10,000 Birds

Since listing, sound science, work towards habitat protection, acquisition and restoration and regulatory reforms its range has expanded north and west, and now includes portions of North Carolina and Mississippi, with significant nesting in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

article thumbnail

Birding and Fly-fishing in Pisgah National Forest

10,000 Birds

My fiancé and I now fish and bird together frequently, and over my graduate program’s spring break turned our sights to Pisgah National Forest in the mountains of western North Carolina. Trips fishing North Carolina Pisgah National Forest' Another outdoor success for the birding and fishing duo!

Fish 96
article thumbnail

The Kite Run

10,000 Birds

Swallow-tailed Kite is an enigmatic species in North Carolina. Outside of this corner of the state the birds can range widely, showing up in random fields in all corners of North Carolina. Their distribution in North Carolina is strange. Mexico, probably. And 2016 is kite year, evidently.

article thumbnail

New Home, New Yard, New County

10,000 Birds

As of the beginning of last month, I am no longer a resident of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Birds county listing North Carolina' Having lived in Chapel Hill for nearly 10 years and been an active birder in the area for nearly that long, this is something of a significant change. That’s some good camouflage.

article thumbnail

Sora! Sora! Sora!

10,000 Birds

It can be boring, for sure, but my own birding lately has been pretty much exclusively in service of my home county list, that of Guilford County, North Carolina. For most North American birders, Sora is the most familiar Rallid on the continent. I realize that no one wants to hear about other people’s lists.

article thumbnail

Baby Bird Likes Bluegrass

10,000 Birds

Lead singer Josh Williams managed to keep the song going and the crowd sure appreciated the unexpected guest star in this video shot almost a year ago at the Doyle Lawson Bluegrass Festival in North Carolina. If bluegrass isn’t your thing the fun starts at the minute-and-a-half mark of the video. As for the bird? … a.

Birds 97
article thumbnail

Snowy Owl Mania!

10,000 Birds

And Nate couldn’t let North Carolina lag behind – he wrote up his long round trip to pick up North Carolina’s first Snowy Owl in thirteen years ! The Stokes checked out some Snowy Owls in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Owls 103
article thumbnail

Tails From the Gulf Stream

10,000 Birds

The Gulf Stream lies between 20-40 miles off the North Carolina coast, and to the unpracticed eye it looks scarcely different that the expanse of blue water it courses through. These three aspects combine to produce one of the most productive spots in the North Atlantic, a place where birds and fish and marine mammals congregate.

article thumbnail

Knowing your Cutlery Birds

10,000 Birds

My home state of North Carolina can probably be considered the northern edge of the south, which means that when one of these long legged beauties wanders up across our state line it’s a pretty big deal. And there were a couple of them recently reported down at the southern tip of North Carolina, so I had to go and have a look.

Birds 78
article thumbnail

Montezuma Winery: Carbonated Rhubarb Wine

10,000 Birds

“This beautiful and singular bird, although a constant resident in the southern extremities of the peninsula of Florida, seldom extends its journeys in an eastern direction beyond the State of North Carolina.

Birds 105
article thumbnail

Sheriff's Deputy Demoted for Helping Animals

Critter News

A deputy sheriff in North Carolina was demoted for getting involved in animal abuse cases without involving the local animal control officers. Sergeant Michael Lewis was demoted after he helped rescue malnourished horses in the Hampstead area.

Animal 100
article thumbnail

Mountain Plover at the Shore

10,000 Birds

North Carolina is perhaps unfortunate to have a lot of such places. I admit I underestimated the resolve of North Carolina’s listing community. For every state vagrant that shows up at a feeder or in a public park, there seems to be one that turns up in a logistically impossible part of the state.

article thumbnail

Animal Legal Defense Fund Ranks States on Animal Protection

Critter News

And the worst: Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arkansas, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, South Dakota, Wyoming You can check out the whole report on their web site.

article thumbnail

Amazing Rescue of a Dog Stranded at Sea

Critter News

A golden lab was rescued by a North Carolina fishing guide about a mile from land. It sounds like his owner left him in one boat while he went off fishing with a friend in another. Some commenters think the story is a hoax. But at least the story has a happy ending. Feliz Friday!

Rescue 100