BIRD BANDING RESULTS FOR

HILTON POND NORTH DURING CURRENT PERIOD

1-24 December 2025

The table below shows birds banded during the Current Period (Columns 1 & 2), each species' Yearly Tally (Column 3), and a Grand Total for each species (Column 4) since banding began at Hilton Pond North in March 2024. Any new species for the current year are in RED.

NEWLY BANDED BIRDS

AT HILTON POND NORTH

1-24 December 2025

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

BANDED BIRD RECAPTURES/RETURNS

AT HILTON POND NORTH

1-24 December 2025

White-breasted Nuthatch banded here 09/30/24; now after-hatch-year female

White-breasted Nuthatch banded here 10/08/24; now 2nd-year male

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North; photo courtesy Alaska Region U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North; map above courtesy Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology

If you missed our 2025 Ruby-throated Hummingbird Banding Summary, it's still posted HERE.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

We arrived at the Pond Mountain gate shortly after noon on 24 December for a short but steep uphill walk to the equipment shed, where we searched for several minutes. Finding no Snow Bunting we wandered further, only to be alerted suddenly by a Common Raven croaking. As we looked skyward, the raven appeared right overhead—dive bombing an unexpected and much larger Golden Eagle. (See non-photographic artistic rendering above.) Such a view alone would have made the trip to Pond Mountain worthwhile, and we were pleased to be able to watch the aerial battle as those two birds floated eastward out of sight.

After that breathtaking spectacle we headed back to the shed, where keen-eyed Scott soon spotted a small white, tan, and brownish-black bird hopping on a shaded slab outside the building (above). Sure enough, it was the object of our quest: A Snow Bunting far from its Arctic breeding grounds. The bird was quite active and apparently was finding enough to eat in this tundra-like locale; the photo above shows a round red seed in its bill, possibly Milo from a nearby feed plot planted by wildlife personnel.

Since it was late December this bird was obviously in non-breeding plumage, making it difficult to sex and age a Snow Bunting. We guessed it was a female based on lots of buff and relatively dull brown dorsal feathers that show more black in non-breeding males. Breeding females lose most buff on head, wings, and breast but remain brown-backed. In general, immature males tend to show darker, richer brown tones on ear coverts, head, and upperparts; immature males also may show slightly more white in folded wings, but there's considerable overlap in all these characteristics and individual variation blurs age/sex distinctions.

Non-breeding adult male Snow Buntings have scaly dark gray backs, buffy cheeks and crown, and white wing patches, but when nesting season approaches males become unmistakeable (above): Bright white underparts, head, and wing patch contrasted with black dorsum and bill. From beneath the male looks like a flying white cross with black wingtips.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

In a bit of serendipity we got a photo of the bunting preening and spreading its tail (above), showing the darkest six rectrices with pointed tips. Young songbirds typically have such "acute" tail feathers that are replaced by rounded or truncate ones in adults. Thus, we feel pretty confident in saying the Snow Bunting on Pond Mountain was an immature, first-year bird that hatched in the summer of 2025.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

The bunting pretty much ignored our presence, allowing us to get within 15 feet or so before scurrying in a different direction. At one point it waded into a shallow puddle beneath a farm tractor and commenced drinking and bathing. A few days previous the puddle was solid ice, so even during our relatively balmy Christmas Eve visit the water temperature couldn't have been much above freezing—a refreshing "polar plunge" for our northern visitor.

Some observers have asked how a Snow Bunting can make it through the winter on a seemingly inhospitable bald in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, but our take is any bird that can survive even summer in the Arctic can probably survive almost anywhere. Although the Pine Mountain bunting wasn't straying far from the equipment shed, surrounding grasses and other herbaceous plants likely provided an abundance of seeds, possibly supplemented by a planted crop of Milo mentioned earlier. And even though it was a winter day there was invertebrate fare to be had—as shown by our photo above of the bunting holding an interesting morsel in its stubby, conical bill. We suspect this was the slightly fuzzy larva of a Grass-eating Sawfly, possibly Dolerus sp. We also observed the bunting extracting what looked like a stretchy earthworm from soft earth near the shed.

Just above is one other food-related photo of interest, in which it appears the Snow Bunting plucked a vegetative shoot from the earth and nibbled on it. This make sense on a grassy bald where freeze-thaw cycles in moist earth allow a bird to forage on succulent sprouts whose basal growth is rich in nutrients. There's plenty of grass and those new sprouts are probably easier to find than insects and other invertebrates.

A few final factoids about Snow Buntings:

—Their breeding range (salmon shading, above) is truly Holarctic, spanning North America, Europe, and Asia; they nest on Ellesmere Island, just 440 miles south of the North Pole! Wintering areas are also expansive, although blue shading on the map doesn't depict extralimital encounters in the southern U.S. Even Florida has a few records; in North Carolina, they show up fairly often during Outer Banks Christmas Bird Counts , where dozens can occur in a given winter.

—Snow Buntings nest in rock crevices and cavities in the tundra. Nests often contain unusual insulative materials such as Rock Ptarmigan feathers, Muskox wool, and Polar Bear hair.

—Snow Buntings survive temperatures as low as -58°F (-50°C) on Arctic breeding grounds by burrowing into snow for shelter and reducing their metabolic rate during extremely cold periods.

—The scientific name is Plectrophenax nivalis, the genus from the Greek plekton, a clawed tool used for striking a lyre. The bunting's hind claw is long and straight and functions as a snowshoe, with nivalis meaning "snowy."

—Snow Bunting populations are in significant decline—a 38% drop from 1970 to 2014. Recent reductions seem related to climate change: Warmer springs trigger earlier breeding behavior no longer paired with food source availability. Such phenological asynchrony creates a mismatch between the birds' early arrival on breeding grounds and peak arthropod abundance that comes later. This reduces foraging efficiency and lowers nestling survival, hence a decline.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

Considering how rarely they occur in North Carolina's Blue Ridge, we doubt we'll ever see a wayward Snow Bunting at Hilton Pond North. We're just glad we got to see and photograph the straggler on Pond Mountain Gamelands. Wonder if it'll be there again NEXT winter?

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

During the past 22 months at Hilton Pond North trail cams have picked up videos of two different adult Bobcats, one rather stout that is likely a male and a second one more slightly built, possibly a female. On 02 December 2025 a camera captured a couple of immature "Bobkittens" exploring the ridge top in light snow at Sassafras Overlook. (Click on arrow to start video.) There was no sign of their mother but we suspect she was someplace near. We're pleased to know we have a breeding population of these elusive apex predators wandering our property, even if they reduce numbers of some of our small mammals.

The big surprise in Hilton Pond North's native plant garden on 12 Dec 2025 was a female Northern Cardinal (NOCA, above) perched in a Lilac shrub. "Why was this a surprise?" you might ask. Well, she was the first cardinal we've seen at our feeders in almost seven weeks, and only the 14th NOCA sighting here since 1 August! We find this to be very odd for a common species that is North Carolina's state bird AND a regular breeder and backyard visitor across the state. That day's NOCA was apparently a local year-round resident—she had a band on her right leg that almost certainly is one of ours—and she was accompanied by another female and two males. Where have these Northern Cardinals been, and why have there been so few here this summer and fall? Difficult questions to answer, but we're glad they're back.

Sunrise from Hilton Pond North, 10 December 2025.

"Red sky at night, sailors' delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning." Perhaps the finest sunrise we've had during our two years in upper Ashe County NC—just before another snowfall.

Sunset from Hilton Pond North, 06 December 2025. We've been exploring the southwest corner of our property, including a few spots we hadn't visited yet—35+ acres being a sizable parcel. In the process we blazed a new trail that comes to a high point we're calling Witch-hazel Hill, so named because there are numerous very large specimens of this winter-flowering shrub. A power line cut goes across the trail and there's a pole at the hill's highest point, from which we took the photo above. We faced east because that provided best color. Just below at left is our old tobacco barn (snow on roof; now Owl Barn); Silas Creek Road leads southward past Landmark Baptist Church in the distance.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North

NOTE: The Snow Bunting was still present as of 28 Dec 2025; odds are it will remain for a while. However, the gate on the road to the Pond Mountain shed was locked starting 02 Jan 2026 so now it's a long uphill and likely windy walk to see the bunting.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North; non-photographic artistic rendering above.