Date: 10/13/26 4:31 pm From: Harry LeGrand (via carolinabirds Mailing List) <carolinabirds...> Subject: The passing of an NC naturalist -- Owen McConnell
Folks,
I learned recently that one of the best overall biologists/naturalists in North Carolina -- Owen McConnell -- has passed away, at age 93 (in September). He was essentially based in Durham and Chapel Hill for most of his life.
He was a birder, botanist, butterflier, fungi expert (mycologist), and an all-around naturalist. He participated in many Carolina Bird Club activities. I had met him on several occasions, perhaps on natural history/botany hikes and probably on bird walks.
In his later decades, he and a friend built a cabin in Graham County, where he spent many weeks at a time learning about, identifying, and submitting data on both the plants and animals of Graham County. From an insect standpoint, he had the first NC record of the spectacular Flag-tailed Spinyleg dragonfly, in Graham County: https://auth1.dpr.ncparks.gov/odes/a/accounts.php?id=10 (In 2026, the second state record came from Madison County, of this species that ranges mainly east just to Tennessee). He provided the Butterflies of North Carolina website with a great number of first Graham County records, in addition to many moth records from that poorly worked county.
Most importantly, he wrote (by himself!) and self-published a nearly 400-page book on the natural history of essentially the central and western portions of Graham County, entitled "*Unicoi Unity: A Natural History of the Unicoi and Snowbird Mountains and their Plants, Fungi, and Animals*" (2013). In fact, I have an autographed copy with some warm comments from him; we communicated quite a bit on the butterflies of the county. There are appendices of lists of most of the plant and animal groups known from the region. There are many color photographs scattered throughout the book. I figured that the book would not be available for sale anywhere, but just now checking amazon.com, it IS for sale there. It is a paperback, but as it would be very hard to get your hands on a copy any other way, being self-published, it is great to see it available for public purchase.
Here is his obituary, sent to me earlier today by Simpson Eason. In this long commentary, you can easily see his important impact on natural history in North Carolina. He will be sorely missed, especially for his important contributions on the natural history of a remote part of NC that essentially lacks others available to fill his shoes.
