Author: Mike Dunn
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Yellowstone in June!
I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful — an endless prospect of magic and wonder. ~Ansel Adams Join me, June 2-9, 2016, for an unforgettable experience in an incomprehensibly beautiful place – the world’s first national park, Yellowstone! This year marks 100 years since the creation of the National Park Service, and there is no Read more…
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Meandering at Mattamuskeet
By thus coordinating the management of the refuge with the natural cycles of plant and animal life, the Fish and Wildlife Service has developed Mattamuskeet to the point where it now supports much larger flocks of waterfowl than came to this refuge in former years. ~Rachel Carson, on a discussion of managing the lake for Read more…
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Following the Nuthatch
I recently had a discussion with someone about sitting quietly in nature and just observing your surroundings as a way to relax, increase your observation skills, and just get in tune with a natural place. It reminded me of a project I had heard about several years ago called The Sit Spot. There are various Read more…
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Bitternsweet Memories
Life wants you to have gratitude for the gift of living. Treasure every second. ~ Bryant McGill The season is about over. It is hard to believe I just finished what is probably my last tour for this winter season at Mattamuskeet and Pocosin Lakes. But, if it is to be the last, at least Read more…
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Arrows of the Sea
Over the unlucky school of fish is a bewildering maze of soaring, circling birds, pouring down out of the sky in rapid succession, plunging into the water like so many projectiles and sending columns of water and spray many feet into the air like the spouting of a school of whales. ~Arthur Cleveland Bent, 1922, Read more…
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Pelagic Birding
You may know the true observer, not by the big things he sees, but by the little things; and then not by the things he sees with effort and premeditation, but by his effortless, unpremeditated seeing—the quick, spontaneous action of his mind in the presence of natural objects. John Burroughs, 1905 I had the good Read more…
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Grass with Eyes
He prefers solitude, and leads the eccentric life of a recluse, “forgetting the world, and by the world forgot.” To see him at his ordinary occupation, one might fancy him shouldering some heavy responsibility, oppressed with a secret, or laboring in the solution of a problem of vital consequence. He stands motionless, with his head Read more…
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When the Geese are Gone
Watching the animals come and go, and feeling the land swell up to meet them and then feeling it grow still at their departure, I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. ~Barry Lopez What a difference a week makes. Less than seven days had passed between my last two Read more…
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Sunrise, Sunset
Let the beauty we love be what we do. ~Rumi The older I get, the more I find beauty in the dazzling displays of light and clouds that form the sunrises and sunsets of my life. They remind me of the passing of time, of things seen and to be seen. They can form the Read more…
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Quiet Beauty
Intimate knowledge can make a place beautiful. ~Melissa Dowland I had a one day refuge tour with a wonderful couple on Monday. I went down Sunday evening, just to make sure I could get down there, given the wild weather we had over the weekend. Turns out, once I got out of the neighborhood, the Read more…
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Roads End Naturalist 