Mary Ellen Rogers retired to Oak Island to care for birds, creatures that have been caught in nets, sliced up by propellers or washed up on shore exhausted by the rigors of migration.
Archives
Seneca Guns: The Booms of Summer
Jets breaking the sound barrier, shifts in tectonic plates, earthquakes and meteoric explosions have all been blamed for the mysterious booms that occasionally rattle windows along the coast.
Will She or Won’t She?
Gov. Beverly Perdue has until 11:59 p.m. Thursday to decide whether to veto several bills, including a much-maligned bill on future sea-level rise.
The Call of the Wild
Gather in the woods of Dare County on Wednesday evenings and howl for red wolves. Better yet, listen as they howl back.
Build It and They Will Come and Come and Come
Driving to the outpost of Carova on the northern Outer Banks can get tricky since the paved road stops in Corolla 11 miles away, but that hasn’t stopped thousands of tourists from making the trip each year. Some wonder how bad traffic will get if a new bridge is built across Currituck Sound.
Fresh, Local Veggies Just a Mouse Click Away
Recently, several groups of small farmers and gardeners, assisted by grants, have turned to the Internet to connect to that vast potential market of customers along the coast who want fresh, local produce.
Get Paid to Plant Juniper
The N.C. Coastal Federation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have a deal for you. They’ll pay 80 percent of the cost of planting rare Atlantic white cedar on your property.
Living Shorelines Require Careful Planning
Living shorelines offer many benefits over the wooden and rock walls that are customarily used to control erosion along estuarine shores. But researchers say they have to be carefully planned to maximize their natural elements.
Living Shorelines: The Natural Alternative
Techniques to control erosion that use oyster shells and marsh grasses are often better alternatives than the traditional wooden bulkhead or rock seawall.
Legislature Tips Its Hand on Offshore Drilling
Fracking was the energy issue of the last session of the General Assembly, but that doesn’t mean that the pro-drilling legislature has forgotten about offshore.
Counting Birds, Then Mrs. A’s Egg Bread
Wilmington back in the 1950s regularly put on one of largest and most productive annual Audubon Christmas Bird Counts on the East Coast. Edna Appleberry’s egg bread awaited after a cold day in the field.
The Watery Paradise That Was Wilmington
Here’s a story about a boy’s life in a natural paradise in 1950’s New Hanover County, written by that same boy, 60 years later. Prepare to enter a very different world in the first of this two-part series.
Murray Bridges: Still Fishing After All These Years
Despite declining water quality, soaring fuel prices and increased foreign competition, commercial fisherman Murray Bridges still takes to the water early most mornings in search of beautiful swimmers.
Saving the Old Fish House
When the owners of the last fish house in Ocracoke announced they were closing, local commercial fisherman got together and bought it, thus ensuring a future for an important piece of coastal heritage.
Time for a Face-to-Face Meeting
The legislative debate over sea-level rise revealed a disturbing antipathy toward science among some legislator. Here’s one thing we can do.
From Lifeless Shells to a Vibrant Reef
Groups like the N.C. Coastal Federation spend a lot of time and effort building oyster reefs to create marine habitat and improve water quality. But do the reefs really work? Do the lifeless piles of shells actually become a sort of living organism?
