Where the Wild Things Are

One of my favorite things about living here on Mountain Island Lake is the interesting wildlife we see in our backyard. While we certainly don't see the deer, wild turkeys and groundhogs as much as we did when we first moved in three plus years ago, there are still interesting critters that come by. 

We have had a lot of hawks hanging around. Hopefully they haven't eaten any more of the mourning doves, but I'm fine with them keeping the mice and squirrel populations in check. And they certainly are pretty predators.

hawk

juvenile hawk

Most days we see the white squirrel scampering around the yard. We named him Whitey Herzog after a winning St. Louis Cardinals baseball coach. It is still surprising to me that he manages to co-exist with the gray squirrels as I understand that squirrels are very territorial. Perhaps he is someone's grandpa and that's why he's accepted. I enjoy having him around as he is not one of the naughty ones who insist on climbing the pole to get to my bird feeder. 

white squirrel

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." ~William Shakespeare 

Learning about Trees

One good thing about staying home is that I've had the opportunity to really look at the plant material growing behind our house. Because we only moved here the end of October, this is our first spring in North Carolina. Our property is on Mountain Island Lake, one of the bodies of water created by Duke Energy when they built dams on the Catawba River, in this case in 1924. Duke owns a 100' setback on the lake, and so the hillsides down to the water are very natural and dotted with native plants and trees.

It was exciting to recently see that we have many white dogwood trees scattered along the back. (The state flower is the dogwood.) But there are also some other white flowering trees as well. The flowers on the trees sort of look like white colored bluebells, and we have never seen anything like them. In doing an online search, we discovered that they are Mountain Silverbells. Sometimes they are referred to as Silverbell Trees, and they grow in Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina. Silverbells also grow as a shrub, and we have plenty of them on the hillside as well. It makes for a beautiful display right now.

Mountain Silverbells

As we stay hunkered in at home due to COVID-19, it will be exciting to see what else springs up in our yard and neighborhood.