Jordan Lake Visitor Assistance Center at the dam has a RARE bird. The light colored chipping sparrow fledgling is showing a leucistic pattern. Leucistic = white. Compare the youngster’s white areas to its parent’s dark plumage. This kind of plumage color abnormality occurs about 1 in 30,000 birds. I hope you can go see this cutie. Thanks Army Corps CESAW Jon Bannerman for the original sighting!
B. Everett Jordan Lake
TagJordan Lake Dam Tailrace post Flooding
Jordan Lake Dam and Tailrace Area are Open! Please be very careful as the Haw River is flowing very fast and forceful. I would avoid going on the riprap rocks! A slip could be dangerous. I made the clip this morning and it has the Haw River, ospreys and great blue herons fishing.
There’s a World Out There
This great blue heron youngster, from this year’s breeding season, has an expression that I have also seen on five-year-old humans. He seems to be saying “OK, I got here to this place. Not sure what this place is. Now, what am I supposed to do next?”
Sky Leopard
The sky leopard roared, pinned its ears back, ruffled its neck, lunged upward in anger at all of the storms that had been happening. It decided to gobble up all of the clouds and perhaps stop the blinding lightning strikes, booming echoing thunder and torrential rains.
Feathered Air Conditioner
Great blue herons, in an effort to keep cool, do what looks to us like a dog panting. It’s not the same process however. The great blue heron flutters its gular … its throat tissues. With the heron’s mouth open, the damp throat is rapidly fluttered and causes a living form of evaporative cooling! Almost like an air conditioner with feathers.
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