Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner I
48 x 36 acrylic on wood panel
Before Hurricane Helene permanently altered the Hickory Nut Gorge, where we live, I often lamented that we never saw bluebirds at our feeders or in our yard. We saw other generalists like house finches and goldfinches, but no bluebirds. As the land began to heal and support organisms again, especially with the return of abundant insect life, bluebirds have shifted into our local ecosystem and yard. Bluebirds prefer scattered trees and require a clean sightline to hunt insects.
The goldfinches, house finches, cardinals and many other birds still freeload off of our feeders, but suddenly our feeders are even more colorful; we’re starting to see birds that prefer forest edge ecosystems and scattered tree habitat instead of dense forest habitats. Birds that require deeper forest and older trees have declined in the area. Experts estimate that our gorge lost between 30 and 90 percent of our trees as a result of wind, floods and landslides from Hurricane Helene. Upcoming works will investigate the resulting shift in species. This is the first in that new series.
