Weather and the land · A living museum
The Shipley Farms Field Guide
Step into the Linville Creek valley. Tap a numbered exhibit to meet who lives there, then follow the energy, the water and the nitrogen that keep it all alive.
Tap a numbered pin to open that exhibit
- Birds recorded
- 34
- Plants, ID pending
- 4
- Missing pieces
- 12
- Acres
- 115
First edition, November 2026. Built only from dated records at Shipley Farms, with every gap left open for you to help fill. How we know · Farm map · Weather
Gallery 1
Six habitats, one valley
Exhibit 1
The Hardwood Slope
Mountain woods on the slopes, roughly half the tract
In March, before the trees leaf out, the woods floor flowers with spring wildflowers that have only a few weeks of sunlight to grow, bloom and set seed.
Meet the residents · tap one to see it in the food web
🧩 Missing pieces: help find them
Exhibit 2
The Pasture
About 60 acres of grass on the valley floor
Grazing keeps a grassland open. Without grazing or mowing, a pasture slowly fills with brambles and saplings and turns to woods. Open-country birds like the Eastern Meadowlark, Eastern Bluebird and Killdeer use this open ground.
Meet the residents · tap one to see it in the food web
🧩 Missing pieces: help find them
Exhibit 3
The Edge
Fence lines, hedgerows and where woods meet field
Edges mix two habitats, so they hold birds from both. They are also where invasive plants most often get a foothold.
Meet the residents · tap one to see it in the food web
🧩 Missing pieces: help find them
Exhibit 4
Linville Creek
A small mountain stream that runs through the tract
Every raindrop that falls on the farm and is not used by a plant or animal ends up here. The creek's wet edges hold different plants and birds from the dry pasture.
Meet the residents · tap one to see it in the food web
🧩 Missing pieces: help find them
Exhibit 5
Underground
Chestnut, Saunook and Nikwasi soils
Most of the farm's living things are underground: bacteria, fungi, worms and insects that recycle everything that dies back into food for plants.
Meet the residents · tap one to see it in the food web
🧩 Missing pieces: help find them
Exhibit 6
The Sky
About 50 inches of rain a year
Weather and migration tie this valley to the rest of the continent. Some birds recorded here, like the Barn Swallow and Eastern Kingbird, spend the winter in South America.
Meet the residents · tap one to see it in the food web
🧩 Missing pieces: help find them
Gallery 2
The food web: who eats whom
Every living thing here is tied to others by what it eats. Tap any creature: green threads lead to its food, red threads to whatever eats it, and glowing dots show energy flowing through. Drag them around. Take one away and see who goes hungry.
Your food chain
Growing the food web…
Gallery 3
The valley in 3D
The real shape of the land, from laser measurements (lidar) and an aerial photograph, with the Shipley Farms boundary in red and Linville Creek in blue. Height is stretched 1.6 times so the slopes read clearly. The exhibit pins open the habitats above.
About 3 MB. Works best on Wi-Fi.
Gallery 4
Cycles: nothing is ever used up
The journey of a raindrop
Follow one drop from a hillside at Shipley Farms down Linville Creek and eight more rivers to the sea: 3,025 km (1,880 miles), measured along the real river channels. Scroll, and the drop travels with you on a map.
- Linville Creek
- Brushy Fork
- Cove Creek
- Watauga River
- South Fork Holston
- Holston River
- Tennessee River
- Ohio River
- Mississippi River
- The sea
The nitrogen wheel
Tap a station, or press Next.
Energy flows one way. Carbon goes around.
Energy does not cycle: it flows from the Sun into plants, up the food chain, and out as heat. Only about a tenth passes from one link to the next.
Carbon does cycle. Plants pull carbon dioxide from the air to build themselves, and animals and microbes breathe it back out. Cows also burp methane, a greenhouse gas made by the microbes in their rumen. Grass roots put carbon into the soil, and scientists are still measuring how much grazed pasture stores; it depends on the land and how it is grazed. We have not measured the soil here yet.
Gallery 5
A year at Shipley Farms
Spin through the year
Green months have records. So far, birds were recorded on checklists in April, May and December, and plants were photographed in March and June. Every pale, dashed month is a mystery waiting to be solved. The small number in a green month is how many kinds were recorded.
Gallery 6
The Hall of Species
Every specimen in the museum. Each one is stamped with how we know it is here. Tap one to find it in the food web.
Eats almost anything: worms, insects, seeds, carrion and eggs.
Eats almost nothing but seeds, and nests late in summer when thistle seed is ripe.
North America's smallest falcon. Hovers over fields for grasshoppers, voles and small birds.
Runs, stops and pulls up earthworms; eats fruit in fall and winter.
Builds mud nests on barns and skims low over pasture for insects. Winters in South America.
Carries acorns away and buries them, planting oaks. Sometimes takes eggs.
Knows over a thousand song types. Insects, fruit and acorns.
Follows grazing animals to catch the insects they stir up, and lays its eggs in other birds' nests.
Tiny bird, enormous song. Hunts insects and spiders in tangles.
The farm's grazers. By eating grass, cattle keep the pasture open, the kind of open country meadowlarks and bluebirds use.
Travels in flocks after fruit; catches insects in summer.
Small sparrow with a rusty cap. Mostly seeds, with insects in nesting season.
Walks fields for seeds and insects.
A masked warbler of thick, damp vegetation. Insects.
A gray sparrow that hops on the ground for seeds.
Drops from a perch onto insects in short grass; eats berries in winter.
Darts out from fences to snatch insects, and chases crows and hawks away. Winters in South America.
Sings from fence posts and walks the grass hunting grasshoppers and beetles.
Scratches through leaf litter for seeds, insects and fruit.
Brought from Europe in 1890. Probes lawns and pasture for grubs and insects.
Eats seeds and fruit, almost entirely plant food.
Brought from Europe in the 1850s; lives around barns. Seeds and insects.
A bubbly singer that hunts insects and spiders.
A shorebird that nests on bare ground and fakes a broken wing to lead danger away.
Eats seeds from the ground, nearly all plant food.
Seeds and fruit, plus insects fed to its chicks.
A woodpecker that feeds on the ground, licking up ants.
Probes bark for insects and stores nuts and fruit.
Circles high or waits on a pole. Mostly voles, mice and other small mammals, plus snakes.
Males sing 'konk-la-ree' from wet spots. Insects in summer, seeds the rest of the year.
A streaky brown sparrow of brushy edges. Seeds and insects.
Catches flying insects on the wing. Winters from the southern US to Central America.
Caterpillars in summer, seeds and nuts in winter.
A mouse-like wren of damp woods and stream banks. Insects and spiders.
Bright yellow, sings 'sweet-sweet-sweet'. Caterpillars and other insects.
Trillions of bacteria and other microbes inside every cow break grass down into food the cow can use. A cow could not live on grass without them.
The recyclers. They break down dead plants, dung and animals and return nutrients to the soil for the next plants.
Basswood flowers are a favourite of bees in early summer, and its leaves feed many caterpillars.
Dutchman's breeches, Carolina spring beauty and cut-leaved toothwort bloom in March, before the trees leaf out, then vanish until next year. Ants carry some of their seeds.
A canopy tree of rich mountain coves. Its leaves feed caterpillars, and its sap is maple syrup.
A small native mustard with peppery seed pods. Its seeds feed finches and sparrows.
Clover pulls nitrogen from the air with help from bacteria in its roots, which feeds the soil. The farm's own pages describe 'clover-rich pastures'. Which clovers is still a question.
The base of the pasture food web. Shipley Farms' FAQ says the cattle graze grass and forage, but nobody has recorded which grasses grow here yet. Can you help name them?
A flicker's favourite food. Ants also plant wildflower seeds by carrying them home.
They carry pollen from flower to flower so plants can make seeds and fruit.
Ground beetles hunt; grubs live in the soil and feed on roots.
Baby moths and butterflies: the main food most songbirds feed their chicks.
They bury cow pats, returning nutrients to the soil. Whether they are here is not yet known.
Earthworms mix the soil and pull dead leaves underground. Robins and killdeer hunt them.
Gnats, flies and mayflies over the pasture and creek. Swallows catch them in the air.
The pasture's grass-eaters you can hear. Meadowlarks and kestrels hunt them. Nobody has logged one on the farm yet.
Oaks and hickories feed jays, woodpeckers and turkeys. None has been recorded on the tract yet. A missing piece.
Snakes hunt voles and mice, and hawks hunt snakes. No snake has been recorded on the tract yet.
Small grass-eaters that hawks and kestrels depend on. Not yet recorded on the tract.
Many birds switch to fruit in fall and winter. Which fruiting shrubs and vines grow on the farm has not been recorded yet.
Gallery 7
How life works
Gallery 8
How we know, and how you can help
- 🟢 Recorded at Shipley Farms
Someone recorded it on or right around the tract: a dated checklist or sighting with a precise location inside the property line.
- 🟡 Photographed here, ID pending
A real photo at a real point on the farm, but nobody has confirmed what it is yet.
- 📣 Shipley Farms says
Shipley Farms' own pages name it, but nobody has recorded it yet.
- 🧬 Here by biology
Certain without a sighting, because it lives in or on something that is here (every cow has rumen microbes).
- 🧩 Missing piece
A part the food web needs that nobody has recorded on the farm yet. Help us find it.
Rare and protected in the High Country
The mountains of northwest North Carolina are home to species found in few other places. To protect them, this museum never shows where any rare species has been seen, on this farm or anywhere else.
- Grasshopper Sparrow Ammodramus savannarum. A grassland bird that needs pastures and hayfields. North Carolina's Natural Heritage Program keeps it on a watch list.
- Golden-winged Warbler Vermivora chrysoptera. Nests in young, brushy habitat in the mountains. A species of special concern in North Carolina.
- Bog Turtle Glyptemys muhlenbergii. One of North America's smallest turtles, found in mountain bogs and wet meadows. Threatened in North Carolina and protected federally.
- Eastern Hellbender Cryptobranchus alleganiensis. A giant salamander of clean, fast mountain rivers, up to two feet long.
Help fill the gaps
On a guided visit, grown-ups can photograph what they find with the free iNaturalist app. Please stay with your guide and outside the cattle fences. Every confirmed record goes into the next edition of this museum.
Sources and notes
- Birds: eBird checklists whose location falls inside the Shipley Farms property line, 2021–2025, via the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. "Recorded at Shipley Farms" means on or right around the farm, not proof of nesting.
- Plants pending ID: iNaturalist observations at points inside the property line, 2025–2026, not yet confirmed by the iNaturalist community.
- Diets: general information for each species, mainly the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds. They describe the species everywhere, not observations made here.
- 3D valley: USGS 3DEP lidar and NC OneMap orthoimagery, as on the farm map. Rainfall: PRISM. The creek's path: USGS hydrography. Soils: USDA NRCS.
- Illustrations drawn for this page. Built with open-source D3, three.js, Rough.js and canvas-confetti.
- Locations of rare and sensitive species are never published. Observers are not named.