State guide

North Carolina Nature Guide

North Carolina runs through three worlds in a single day's drive — the high Blue Ridge, where Mount Mitchell rises to 6,684 feet as the highest peak in the eastern United States; the rolling red-clay Piedmont of oak-hickory forest and old fields; and the vast Coastal Plain of longleaf-pine savannas, blackwater swamps, and the barrier-island Outer Banks. That sweep packs in some of the East's great wildlife spectacles: tens of thousands of Tundra Swans and Snow Geese wintering at Mattamuskeet and Pungo, Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in the Sandhills longleaf pine, breeding warblers in the spruce-fir of the high mountains, and Brown Pelicans patrolling the surf at Cape Hatteras. From USDA zone 6a on the highest peaks to 8b on the southern coast, the seasons range from montane to humid subtropical.