Fossil Fuel Extraction Endangered List

The list includes a beautiful fish that the team at Conservation Fisheries is working hard to save:

Kentucky Arrow Darter: Toxic waste from mountaintop coal mining is poisoning streams and killing the rare Kentucky arrow darter fish (and contaminating the drinking water of downstream communities). The arrow darter has been wiped out from more than half of its range.

The full list and story is here...

Today at Hiwassee Refuge

We did get a view of the Hooded Cane as it flew by but nothing to show a picture of. We had a Whooping crane for a few minutes until it turned into an albinistic Sandhill crane...a rare enough white colored sandhill but not a Whooper.
I was amazed at the number of folks from foreign states and even countries that were hanging around. Some folks had been there for ten hours when we arrived. The light was pretty marginal for photos, as you can see from the above.

Golden Christmas

Our Christmas Eve hike led us by this little winter jewel, a blooming goldenrod on the lip of Walden Ridge. It sits in a small patch of dirt between the sandstone outcroppings that layer the last pitch to the ridge top. It would have been easy to miss or step on. I have no idea what species it is. In such harsh micro habitat, a particular plant can get dwarfed and twisted in the fight to survive, and the normal identifying characteristics escape me and my book.

December Anole

Taken this afternoon with my Christmas present to myself...

She's Alive...For Now