YOUR MONTHLY FIELD GUIDE
JANUARY
Winter Reveals
Southern Blue Ridge • Western North Carolina
January strips the mountains to their essentials. Bare hardwoods expose ridgelines, animal trails emerge, and the forest's hidden structure becomes visible. With leaves gone, details often overlooked during the growing season come into focus.
Meet This Month's Species
Polystichum acrostichoides
An evergreen woodland fern whose deep green fronds remain vibrant through winter, adding life to the quiet forest floor.
Corvus corax
Intelligent and curious, ravens soar above the Blue Ridge's forested ridges, communicating through deep, croaking calls
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Dryobates pubescens
North America's smallest woodpecker, the downy searches tree bark and branches for insects, often joining mixed flocks of winter birds.
Quercus alba
A towering native hardwood whose acorns provide essential autumn and winter food for deer, squirrels, turkeys, and other forest wildlife.
Playful and elusive, river otters glide through mountain streams and rivers, hunting fish and crayfish while making their homes along wooded waterways.
Before dawn, a low series of hoots rises from the winter trees. Great Horned Owls may already be calling to a mate while the mountain forest is still quiet.
Small Wonders
Fagus grandifolia
American beech trees often hold their pale, papery leaves through winter, fluttering and rattling in the wind long after the surrounding woods have gone bare.
Microhexura montivaga
The spruce-fir moss spider, a tiny tarantula relative no bigger than a pencil eraser, lives hidden in cool moss mats on the highest Blue Ridge peaks—an unseen part of the winter mountains.
