ACHENES!...BLESS YOU

Bill Hilton Jr. has a message for everyone out there who don't like mowing their lawns...don't. That's right, just leave your lawn to nature and watch in wonder at what appears! That's what he has done in the (already small) lawn around the Hilton Pond farm house. In a very short amount of time there have been some interesting things sprouting up. There is daidy fleabane, a drought-resistant plant that can supposedly repel fleas. Indian strawberry has appeared with it's bright red, achene-bearing fruit. Wood sorrel, bearing a delightful purple flower, has leaves that can be used in salads or to make a tart lamonade-like drink. Oh, and then of course there is grass. Yes, grass, which has flowers and seeds that most mowers never get to see. To see what else emerged from the Hilton Pond lawn (and to find out what an achene is), check out "This Week at Hilton Pond!"
Photo courtesy of Bill Hilton Jr.

Each week Bill Hilton Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center in York, South Carolina, shares accurate and detailed nature information and gorgeous photos on topics from green frogs to pickerelweed. You can sign up to get free reminders for "This Week at Hilton Pond" on their Web site. Bill has been kind enough to share his photos with us for our EcoFeatures section. This resource is definitely one you don't want to miss!
Posted 6/18/07

NAMES CAN BE DECEIVING
(OR... THE NEW RIVER IS NOT NEW AND
ELDERHOSTEL IS NOT A HATE GROUP FOR SENIORS)

This week Bill Hilton Jr. takes us to Fayetteville, West Virginia for the New River Birding & Nature Festival. This is the same New River that begins here in North Carolina, thought to be the second oldest river in the world! Bill shares other unique features in and around the festival site. There is the New River Gorge Bridge, the longest steel arch bridge found in the Western Hemisphere as well as the highest vehicular bridge in the Americas. He also shows us images taken from Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, a protected glade covered mostly in sphagnum moss (where the marsh marigold, left, was found blooming). Learn about the rest of the trip at "This Week at Hilton Pond!"
Photo courtesy of Bill Hilton Jr.

Each week Bill Hilton Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center in York, South Carolina, shares accurate and detailed nature information and gorgeous photos on topics from green frogs to pickerelweed. You can sign up to get free reminders for "This Week at Hilton Pond" on their Web site. Bill has been kind enough to share his photos with us for our EcoFeatures section. This resource is definitely one you don't want to miss!
Posted 6/18/07

AS THOUGH THEIR REPUTATION WEREN'T ALREADY BAD ENOUGH, NOW IT TURNS OUT THEY ARE COCKROACHES

This week's Hilton Pond feature has some things in common with the last one...it is often hated, but you can't help but be fascinated by its lifestyle. It's the termite, and Bill Hilton Jr. and crew found tons of them swarming around the front porch at Hilton Pond. We don't normally think of termites as fliers, and it turns out that only the "alates," the swarming reproductive caste, needs them. Once a female alate finds a suitable nest site, she snaps off her wings with a thoracic convulsion, and her mate follows suit. Raising kids can be tough! Find out more about the social structure, classification and digestive system of these fascinating insects at "This Week at Hilton Pond!"
Photo courtesy of Bill Hilton Jr.

Each week Bill Hilton Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center in York, South Carolina, shares accurate and detailed nature information and gorgeous photos on topics from green frogs to pickerelweed. You can sign up to get free reminders for "This Week at Hilton Pond" on their Web site. Bill has been kind enough to share his photos with us for our EcoFeatures section. This resource is definitely one you don't want to miss!
Posted 5/18/07

DON'T MESS WITH THE COWBIRD MAFIA

Even if you are one of those folks who hates the brown-headed cowbird, you still have to marvel at their resourceful lifestyle. Their scientific name translates to "black vagabond," and the title is fitting. Cowbird females don't build their own nests. Instead, they seek out nests of other bird species and lay an egg there. Who has time to build a nest when you lay an egg a day for 10-12 days in a row? Female cowbirds do this three times a breeding season, for a total of about three dozen eggs! The cowbird egg usually hatches before the other eggs in the host nest, giving the cowbird chick a head start. The young cowbird is dominant in the nest and can sometimes prevent its surrogate mother from having a second brood. Learn more about the impacts brown-headed cowbirds might be having on songbirds, how their populations have changed and what the "cowbird mafia" is all about at "This Week at Hilton Pond!"
Photo courtesy of Bill Hilton Jr.

Each week Bill Hilton Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center in York, South Carolina, shares accurate and detailed nature information and gorgeous photos on topics from green frogs to pickerelweed. You can sign up to get free reminders for "This Week at Hilton Pond" on their Web site. Bill has been kind enough to share his photos with us for our EcoFeatures section. This resource is definitely one you don't want to miss!
Posted 5/16/07

SPRING HAS UNSPRUNG

The temperature in the Piedmont of the Carolinas fell to record lows on Easter Sunday. Farmers tried to protect their emerging crops, gardeners did their best to shelter budding blossoms and Bill Hilton Jr. surveyed foliage damage around Hilton Pond. As sad as the wilted and dead leaves were to look at, things were made worse by the smell of "death" that hung in the air. Bill traced the smell to the shagbark hickories which seemed to have fared the worst in the cold snap. We must warn you, the photos in "This Week at Hilton Pond" are full of horticultural death and destruction. As the weather warms again, we'll have to see which plants were able to withstand the cold. And, since we can't bear to be totally dismal, we chose to feature this photo that Bill took of one of the few shagbark's that waited to leaf out until after the freeze.
Photo courtesy of Bill Hilton Jr.

Each week Bill Hilton Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center in York, South Carolina, shares accurate and detailed nature information and gorgeous photos on topics from green frogs to pickerelweed. You can sign up to get free reminders for "This Week at Hilton Pond" on their Web site. Bill has been kind enough to share his photos with us for our EcoFeatures section. This resource is definitely one you don't want to miss!
Posted 4/12/07

BILL? HE'LL HAVE TO CALL YOU BACK...
HE'S IN A CAMOFLAGED TURTLE BLIND RIGHT NOW

The yellowbelly sliders in Bill Hilton Jr.'s mid-March report from Hilton Pond attracted a lot of attention, so he decided to dedicate a full report to these colorful reptiles. Good photos of sliders are hard to get, however, as they slide into the water as soon as they see anybody approaching. That didn't stop Bill. He spent hours in a camoflaged blind with his camera, patiently waiting for their emergence from the pond. Check out the great photos he took, learn about the sliders' always-level iris line and find out how male turtles entice their mates at "This Week at Hilton Pond!"
Photo courtesy of Bill Hilton Jr.

Each week Bill Hilton Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center in York, South Carolina, shares accurate and detailed nature information and gorgeous photos on topics from green frogs to pickerelweed. You can sign up to get free reminders for "This Week at Hilton Pond" on their Web site. Bill has been kind enough to share his photos with us for our EcoFeatures section. This resource is definitely one you don't want to miss!
Posted 4/12/07

A TRIP WITH LEN AND LOLA

The first eagles to be born in captivity in North Carolina are Len and Lola. They hatched at the Carolina Raptor Center last year in March of 2006. You can go to the Center's Web site and look under the "Learn" section for "Eagle Journeys" to follow the movements of these two birds. "There have been no studies of migration routes for eagles in the Mid-South," says Alan Barnhardt, Executive Director of the Carolina Raptor Center. Solar-powered Global Positioning System (GPS) units with satellite transmitters allow the birds' movements to be tracked.
It's hard the believe that the fuzzy beings you see in the photo above fledged in just twelve weeks. Len's travels landed him on the St. Lawrence River near Canada where he spent the summer. Lola headed north a week later ending up in New York. Len returned along the same path to overwinter on the Virginia/West Virginia border. Lola moved a bit farther west and is overwintering in Alabama. Check out the site for yourself to find out where they travel this year!

Posted 3/13/07

FOLLOWING FLYING SQUIRRELS

Bill Hilton Jr. and crew at Hilton Pond are always happy to have folks come out and use the center for research purposes. This week Katherine Kimball Thorington, a Ph.D. student at Wake Forest University, got Bill's help in tracking down some flying squirrels (Glaucomys volans) nesting in bluebird boxes. Ms. Thorington is interested in determining whether adults that congregate in winter are related to one another. While no congregating adults were found, two nursing females and their young were captured and tissue samples were taken. Luckily, unlike many small mammals, flying squirrel mothers won't usually desert their babies after humans have handled them. Find out more, and see some great photos of the pups, at 'This Week at Hilton Pond!'
Photo courtesy of Bill Hilton Jr.

Each week Bill Hilton Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center in York, South Carolina, shares accurate and detailed nature information and gorgeous photos on topics from green frogs to pickerelweed. You can sign up to get free reminders for "This Week at Hilton Pond" on their Web site. Bill has been kind enough to share his photos with us for our EcoFeatures section. This resource is definitely one you don't want to miss!
Posted 3/13/07

WHO YOU CALLIN' A YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER???

Why, in fact, do we call this bird a yellow-bellied sapsucker? That is what Bill Hilton Jr. ponders in "This Week at Hilton Pond." He notes that a more accurate name would be yellow-bellied sap-lapper. Find out why this is true and how this industrious well-driller laps sap so speedily. It's a tongue-twister waiting to happen! But tongue adaptations aren't the only thing covered in this week's installment. Zygodactyl digits and tapered retrix tripods also help this woodpecker. Say that ten times fast!
Photo courtesy of Bill Hilton Jr.

Each week Bill Hilton Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center in York, South Carolina, shares accurate and detailed nature information and gorgeous photos on topics from green frogs to pickerelweed. You can sign up to get free reminders for "This Week at Hilton Pond" on their Web site. Bill has been kind enough to share his photos with us for our EcoFeatures section. This resource is definitely one you don't want to miss!
Posted 3/6/07

IS IT ME, OR IS IT HOT OUT HERE?

The folks at the Prairie Ridge Ecostation for Wildlife and Learning are hot! That's because they carried out a prescribed burn on the prairie resoration site this week. (Don't worry, the bison in the photo are not real!)
Posted 3/2/07

HE'S CUTE...BUT HAS SOME NOT-SO-CUTE EATING HABITS

Tell me you can resist this face! Click here to check out the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' latest Nature Notebook entry on the short-tailed shrew! Nature Notebook is a guide to the animals, plants and other natural phenomena of the Southeast. A new nature profile is posted every month. You can even subscribe and be notified when a new one is posted.
Posted 2/21/07