12 Months of Birding: Golden-Crowned Kinglet

Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Our 12 Months of Birding series continues with a bird we often see in February, the Golden-crowned Kinglet. This royally named tiny bird spends winters in our Pisgah National Forest neighborhood and the rest of the year in the northern U.S. and Canada. More often heard than seen, the Golden-crowned Kinglet can be challenging to find; generally we see and hear them in the evergreens and shrubby areas on the edges of the wetlands, which is at the southern end of the property where the boardwalk is located.

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Year of the Trail in North Carolina – Featured Trails in January and the Future Bernard Mountain Trail

View of mountains from a distance in the wintertime with bare trees

This year is North Carolina’s Year of the Trail, celebrating all kinds of trails and all the good things about them. And all year long, we’re sharing our favorite trails in the greater Asheville area, focusing on those within an hour of the Inn on Mill Creek B&B, as well as new trails coming to our neck of the woods.

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Winter Birding and the Great Backyard Bird Count

Bird tracks in the snow

Wintertime is a great time to do birdwatching – it’s one of the activities you can do year-round here in Pisgah National Forest east of Asheville, North Carolina.

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Holiday Happenings around Asheville, Black Mountain and Marion

UPDATED DECEMBER 13!  Want the scoop on what’s going on when you visit the Asheville area during the holiday season? Parades, tree lighting ceremonies, music, special shopping days and outdoor fun. It’s all here.

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Winter Diversion: Biltmore Estate Conservatory

While the winter of 2017 has been rather kind to us (just one snow day so far…and our daffodils are peeking out at the end of January… whaaaaaat!?), wintertime in the mountains of Western North Carolina can often be a teensy bit unpredictable. For those chilly days when you don’t want to go outside or you’re getting antsy for spring, we suggest a little indoor “green” therapy at Biltmore Estate’s Conservatory. Inside we go!

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North Carolina Mountain Birds: Chipping Sparrow

Chipping Sparrow By Vkulikov (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Look high up in the trees or on top of the high evergreen shrubs (and sometimes on the ground) near the birdfeeders at the Inn on Mill Creek and you may spot the Chipping Sparrow, our January 2017 pick in our 12 Months of Birding at the Inn series on the blog.

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Early January Snow Day

Happy New Year! And yippee! Our first snow of the winter season arrived on January 6, 2017, blanketing Pisgah National Forest around Asheville, including our neck of the woods at the Inn on Mill Creek with several inches of beauty. Stillness. Peaceful. Calming. Quiet. A great way to kick off the new year.

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