The February 2016 pick for our 12 Months of Birding at the Inn series on the blog is a cool-weather resident of Pisgah National Forest around the Inn on Mill Creek, providing a little bit of spunk to the forest during an otherwise quiet wintry season. Let’s meet the Ruby-crowned Kinglet.
Winter Storm Jonas visited us on January 22, 2016, blanketing the ground with snow and resulting in a pristine winter landscape for us to enjoy over the next couple of days (next weekend’s forecast…60 degrees!).
Asheville Restaurant Week is a special treat — not just for locals, but also for wintertime visitors to the North Carolina mountains. What better way to sample the awesome food from the Asheville area?
There are plenty of advantages to visiting the North Carolina mountains in what we call the Quiet Season (January-March). Last year, we gave you the top five reasons to visit the Asheville and Black Mountain area in wintertime. Here’s a refresher:
OK, so it’s 64 degrees here in the mountains of North Carolina on Christmas… well, even without a snowflake in sight, we’re still going to have hot cocoa with marshmallows by the tree and enjoy this first weekend of winter. It’s winter, right?
Time to break out the Christmas music, light the tree, and be merry — some really fun holiday events are going on this year in Black Mountain, NC, including outdoor movies! They’ll be showing “It’s a Wonderful Life” (Dec. 4), “A Christmas Story” (Dec.12) and “The Polar Express” (Dec. 19) at The Junction building on Black Mountain Avenue. All movies play at 8pm.
One of the most impressive Christmas displays in western North Carolina, Christmas at Biltmore is nothing short of spectacular. Their theme for 2015 is “A Gilded Age Christmas” and Biltmore is definitely living up to that theme!
We’ve chosen a colorful fellow to help us wrap up winter and head into springtime in the mountains of Western North Carolina: our March 2015 bird in our 12 Months of Birding at the Inn blog series is none other than the Purple Finch.
A lot of our guests and friends of the Inn who live in the northeastern U.S. and also in the midwest are no doubt ready for Spring. It’s understandable, what with Boston getting more than 100(!) inches of snow this 2015 winter season and other areas seeing plenty of the white stuff to last through the rest of winter.
During the wintertime, there are fewer species of birds in our neck of the woods. However, the ones who are year-round and winter only residents really stand out. One such cold weather superstar is our February 2015 pick for our 12 Months of Birding at the Inn blog series: The Pine Siskin.
