Author: Mike Dunn
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Ground Squirrels in Trees
There was no variation in his manner of proceeding all the time I observed him. He was alert, cautious, and exceedingly methodical. ~John Burroughs, on observing a chipmunk, 1894 On our recent mountain trip, we camped at Hickory Ridge Campground at Grayson Highlands State Park. In addition to several maple, birch and (appropriately) hickory trees,… Read more…
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The Highlands of Virginia
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity. ~John Muir I think thousands of people must have read this quote last Sunday and headed to my favorite Virginia state park, Grayson Highlands. The parking lots were all packed on… Read more…
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Tree Climbing
To climb a tree is for a child to discover a new world. ~Friedrich Frobel, 1826 It has been a very busy couple of weeks so you may have noticed my posts have been a bit slow in coming. Last weekend we finished celebrating our birthdays with a different sort of birthday surprise…a private tree… Read more…
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Northwoods
There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past… Read more…
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Surprise Endings
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars… ~Charles Darwin, 1860 So strange are the habits of certain groups of wasps that they have caused many a person to look upon them in disbelief… Read more…
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A Swirl of Swifts
Their twittering notes and whizzing wings create a musical, but wild, continued roar. The twittering, whizzing roar continues to increase; the revolving circle fast assumes a funnel shape, moving downward until the point reaches the hollow in the stub, pouring its living mass therein until the last bird dropped out of sight. ~Chief Pokagon, of… Read more…
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Another One Hundred!
During all these years there existed within me a tendency to follow Nature in her walks. ~John James Audubon Per my habit of posting such milestones, it is time to recognize another one hundred posts gone by. This makes 400 posts since this blog was born shortly into my retirement. Like the others before it,… Read more…
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BugFest Residue, Part 2
Nature, in her blind search for life, has filled every possible cranny of the earth with some sort of fantastic creature. ~Joseph Wood Krutch Here are a few more of the fantastical critters from our scouring of the woods and fields for BugFest… The stars of this year’s caterpillar table were several huge polyphemus moth… Read more…
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BugFest Residue
If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly’s wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon– you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. ~Michael Crichton BugFest, the NC Museum of Natural Sciences’… Read more…
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Shedding Light on the Subject
The insect world is nature`s most astonishing phenomenon. Nothing is impossible to it; the most improbable things occur there. ~Rachel Carson Last week we were looking for caterpillars for this past weekends’ BugFest event, and ended up making a couple of nocturnal excursions (it is often easier to see cryptic caterpillars at night by the… Read more…
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Roads End Naturalist 