"This Week At Hilton Pond North" is an on-going series of original photo essays—posted more or less weekly—about natural history happenings here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of upper Ashe County, North Carolina. If you want a free e-mail reminder about each new installment, click here to SUBSCRIBE.

Like to listen? After viewing the photo essay a free "Deep Dive" audio podcast is available on Spotify (click arrow) or Apple Podcast (click episode number.)

If you like what you're reading and would like to help support the work of Hilton Pond North, please click on the PayPal Donate Now button below or visit our FUNDING page for other ways you can contribute.

If you have questions or comments about the current installment, send an e-mail to thisweek@hiltonpond.org

Back to previous photo essay; on to next one

#####

BANDED BIRD RECAPTURES/RETURNS

AT HILTON POND NORTH

16-31 July 2026

SUMMARY: We had relatively few recaptures during the recent two-week period, highlighted by seven Ruby-throated Hummingbirds banded in 2025. So far in 2026 we've recaptured 35 RTHU from last year and nine from 2024. Three recaptured American Goldfinches this week appear to be year-round residents and local breeders.

NOTE: List does not include our same-season recaptures, some of which are same-week or even same-day. Birds in RED are in at least their fourth year.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird banded here 07/08/25; now 2nd year female

Ruby-throated Hummingbird banded here 07/24/25; now 2nd year female

Ruby-throated Hummingbird banded here 08/01/25; now 2nd year male

Ruby-throated Hummingbird banded here 08/04/25; now 2nd year male

Ruby-throated Hummingbird banded here 08/09/25; now 2nd year female

Ruby-throated Hummingbird banded here 08/12/25; now 2nd year male

Ruby-throated Hummingbird banded here 09/13/25; now 2nd year female

NOTE: RTHU are true long-distance migrants that depart Hilton Pond North for Mexico or Central America. Some are local breeders, while others pass through during migration.

American Goldfinch banded here 04/07/25; now 3rd year male

American Goldfinch banded here 05/09/25; now after 3rd year male

American Goldfinch banded here 06/23/25; now 3rd year female

NOTE: These AMGO appear to be year-round local residents breeding at or very near Hilton Pond North.

Hilton Pond North's Bird & Nature Cam is up and running. Click on the arrow in the image center above to start our 24/7 livestream; sound on to hear bird calls. You can click on the YouTube arrow to subscribe and stay abreast of exciting year-round Nature Cam happenings in upper Ashe County NC, the heart of the Blue Ridge Province. (Sometimes you'll see snow, rain or fog, so our livestream also serves as a weather cam!)

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

Podcast Link At End

HOME

Contents

Contact

Back to previous photo essay; on to next one

LATE JULY MISCELLANY: FLOWERS, WILDLIFE, OWL BOXES, AND A VISIT FROM AN OLD FRIEND

#43: 16-31 July 2026

Random observations about Blue Ridge Birds & Nature

● Banded in 2026: 40 species, 1,603 individuals

● All-time banding totals (2024-present): 74 species, 4,781 individuals

● Hilton Pond North "Yard List" (2024-present): 93 species encountered (not all banded)

● Local breeding species (based on nests found, banded females with brood patches, or recent fledglings observed or banded): 21

The table below shows birds banded during the Current Period along with each species' Yearly Tally, and a Grand Total for each since banding began at Hilton Pond North on 10 March 2024. Any new species for the current calendar year are in RED.

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

BIRD BANDING RESULTS FOR

HILTON POND NORTH DURING CURRENT PERIOD

16-31 July 2026

All banding at Hilton Pond North is done by Dr. Bill Hilton Jr. (federal master permit #21558) under auspices of the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, following standard humane procedures for capturing, handling, banding, and releasing wild birds.

NEWLY BANDED BIRDS

AT HILTON POND NORTH

16-31 July 2026

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

Photos & text by Dr. Bill Hilton Jr.

Executive Director, Hilton Pond North: Blue Ridge Birds & Nature

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North. Owl photo above courtesy Kim Pierce Lascola

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

SUMMARY: Due to excessive heat and frequent rain during the second half of July at Hilton Pond North, we deployed mist nets on relatively few days and relied primarily on passive hummingbird traps. This yielded just 37 captures of four species, including 33 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds—fully half our total for the year to date. Bandings included recently fledged Northern Cardinal and Tufted Titmouse. (Please see details in the text, photos, and chart below.)

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North. Photo above courtesy Leeann Cronk.

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

Apple Podcast #43

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North. Photo above courtesy Leeann Cronk.

If your school, civic club, or other organization is interested in a hummingbird presentation or bird banding demonstration, we'd be delighted to visit. Contact education@hiltonpond.org for details about scheduling, travel costs, and honorarium.

At the invitation of Leeann Cronk, we were pleased to visit Mountain View Elementary School in Jefferson NC, on two Mondays in July, where Leeann had faithfully maintained a hummingbird feeder in anticipation of Ashe County Public Schools' "Career Accelerator Summer Camps." A local middle school teacher, Leeann organized the "Animal/Human Connection Camp," through which enthusiastic students got behind-the-scenes looks at the world of animal science and care. During these tuition-free sessions, campers explored veterinary basics, wildlife conservation, and animal behavior while learning about careers that help domestic and wild animals thrive.

In our workshop we introduced campers to Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project, our 45-year, 10-country initiative studying hummingbirds throughout North and Central America. Thanks to Leeann's feeder, we were even able to capture a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird (above and below) during each camp session. (Special thanks to Leeann for allowing us to use her excellent photographs.)

All photos, videos, maps, charts, drawings, and text © Hilton Pond North. Photo above courtesy Leeann Cronk.

Fledgling Northern Cardinals (NOCA) are a familiar sight around upper Ashe County's forest edges and brushy areas by late spring into summer, although at Hilton Pond North's 2,900' elevation breeding runs somewhat later than in the Piedmont or Coastal Plain. Newly fledged NOCA are readily distinguished from parents by their dusky, blackish-gray bills—not yet flushed with the coral-orange of adults. Early on their sooty-brown plumage lacks the mature male's crimson or the adult female's warmer buff-red highlights. Eventually both sexes develop a rather unkempt crest and young males acquire red feathers in patches (as in this year's bird, above).

Cardinals are multi-brooded, often producing two or even three clutches per season at lower elevations. Even here in the Blue Ridge, fledglings can turn up over an extended spring/summer window rather than in one synchronized pulse, with young still begging for food from the father while the mother tends to a new nest. NOCA show strong site fidelity, with banded youngsters tending to remain near their natal area; they seldom disperse more than about three miles. We've been somewhat surprised at the relatively small number of Northern Cardinals at our mountain location, banding just 69 in two and a half years.

Nature was at full throttle the last half of July 2026, with wildflowers blooming, midnight moths fluttering, and White-tailed Deer nurturing fawns or growing antlers—all enhanced by a beloved buddy from six decades past being here to help with projects. Yes, Doug Dietz, our Newberry College roommate in the late 1960s, had traveled once again from far-off Camp Meeker CA, to share his volunteer handyman skills around Hilton Pond North.

Reliving good times and making new ones, we tackled a slew of To-Dos, including cutting out and assembling three custom boxes (above) for eight-inch tall Eastern Screech-Owls (EASO). We've encountered this diminutive local breeding bird several times—most notably back in February 2024 when we spotted an apparent mated pair roosting in the old tobacco barn on our property (top photo, gray and red phases). Since then we've captured and banded one screech-owl and many evenings have heard them calling from nearby woods. These nest boxes, made from rot-resistant red cedar with 3" entry holes, supplement natural cavities and could make it easier to monitor owl breeding success—if squirrels don't get to them first! We'll hang the boxes in our forest this fall.

While we took care of desktop duties and banded hummingbirds Doug Dietz had time to wander solo around our 35+ acres, treading the same paths on which wildlife showed up on our trail cams—sometimes missing in-person encounters with him by just a few minutes. For example, a couple of Wild Turkey hens came strutting up the paved driveway shortly after Doug strolled down (click on arrow above to start video). Their ever-growing poults came in dissimilar sizes, suggesting they were from clutches hatched at different times.

White-tailed Deer seemed to be everywhere on our mountain the last two weeks in July, out in the open by day and apparently unafraid of Doug Dietz and other humans. Bucks like the hungry eight-pointer above—in his second (maybe third) year—showed antlers covered by soft velvet that supplies nutrients and protects rapidly growing bone beneath.

We're also hosting white-tail does on our acreage—we estimate at least a half dozen—some of which have recently produced fawns. These youngsters are probably all weaned by now, although they still occasionally try to nuzzle in for a little milk. The one in the video above had just finished bathing and drinking water with its mother.

We'll have more to say about Pond Mountain topography, flora, and fauna in a later photo essay. For now we'll just mention a breathtaking six-foot-tall colony of Turk's Cap Lilies, Lilium superbum (above), growing on a pond margin. This is one of the showiest native wildflowers of the Blue Ridge, blooming mid- to late summer in moist meadows, seeps, and open woodland edges from about 2,000' to 5,000'. Its nodding orange-to-red petals with maroon spotting and a green throat give it the "fez" look that names it. Mature plants can carry a dozen or more blooms—magnets for swallowtail butterflies and an occasional Ruby-throated Hummingbird working the Turk's Cap's deep nectar tubes.

As Doug's visit continued we completed numerous tasks, from tidying up banding office electrical lines to hauling trash and recyclables to taking in for repair the riding mower we use to maintain Hilton Pond North's trails. Perhaps most satisfying was finally cleaning out debris from John's Cabin (winter photo above), a structure on our property that has fallen into disrepair—but we hope can be salvaged.

This was great progress, but all work and no play is never a good idea (especially when hosting a guest from California), so on one of the nicer weather days we drove Doug up to Pond Mountain Game Lands about 30 minutes to our west. Within Ashe County and at nearly 5,000', this spectacular area offers sweeping 360° views of the mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. The site gets its name from a series of small ponds—unusual at that elevation.

On a steep and verdant roadside coming down Pond Mountain we stopped to admire an amazing stand of perhaps three dozen blossoms of Orange Fringed Orchid, Platanthera ciliaris (above left) on 18" stalks—the largest concentration we'd ever seen of this uncommon plant. Not an aerial epiphyte like most tropical orchids, it's a terrestrial species native to temperate areas of the eastern and south-central U.S. It prefers ditches, bogs, and other damp locales with acidic, nutrient-poor soil maintained by rhododendron and laurel. Here in the Blue Ridge its principal pollinator may be Spicebush Swallowtail butterfly, Papilio troilus.

As icing on the cake, right beside this orange flower was a SECOND terrestrial orchid with a somewhat shorter spike of about 50 small, waxy white florets; this was Downy Rattlesnake Plantain, Goodyera pubescens, whose evergreen "snakeskin" basal leaves provide its name and help identify it even in winter. Another acid-loving plant, it is pollinated at least in part by a tiny Golden-green Sweat Bee, Augochlorella aurata.

Adding to vegetative richness of the tangle in our photo was a frond of Hay-scented Fern, Dennstaedtia punctiloba, itself sprouting from a highly branched cluster of what likely was Southern Running-cedar, Diphasiastrum digitatum. (Similar club moss species require fertile stalks and/or a hand lens for positive identification.)

Upon returning late afternoon from Pond Mountain, we remembered Doug Dietz was here at Hilton Pond North for "National Moth Week 2026," so we hung a white sheet beneath an ultraviolet light in the hope of catching a few of these night-flying lepidopterans to show our guest. As darkness descended scores of moths of various sizes and shapes soon landed on the fabric, giving us a chance for observations and photographs. We selected two of the more unusual specimens for discussion.

First was a Clymene Moth, Haploa clymene (above), a member of the Tiger Moth Family, Arctiinae, with two-inch wingspan. Its forewing was cream-colored with a dark-brown border and the hindwing yellowish-tan having one or two dark spots; the forewings folded together to form a distinctive inverted cross. Its spiny black larvae overwinter and feed on Joe-Pye Weed, Boneset, and relatives (Eupatorium spp.), plus oak and willow.

Our second moth—three-quarters-of-an-inch long—was also a study in brown and tan (above), but with an intricate, psychedelic, eye-pleasing pattern of circles and squiggles. This was an aptly named Harriss's Three-Spot, Harrisimemna trisignata, in the Owlet Moth Family, Noctuidae. Widespread in North America, the adult is suspected of feeding on blossoms, tree sap, and overripe fruit; some speculate it could be an important pollinator of night-blooming flowers. Its caterpillars, which resemble bird droppings festooned with tufts of hair, feed on bush honeysuckles, ash, and apple. Mature larvae overwinter as pupae and emerge as adults in spring.

So that's it for our "late July miscellany" of nature observations here and near Hilton Pond North. We're pleased to have had a chance to share these mid-summer encounters with college roomie Doug Dietz and are grateful for his annual volunteer assistance that makes our small non-profit natural history organization more efficient and productive.