Author: Mike Dunn
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Trip Report Part 2: Mattamuskeet and Pocosin Lakes
I just returned from the second recent guided trip to these incredible wildlife refuges. My client was particularly interested in bird photography, so that was high on the agenda. But he made a point of saying he was open to anything, since he was fully aware of the vagaries of wildlife photography – sometimes wildlife… Read more…
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Trip Report, Part 1: Pocosin Lakes-Mattamuskeet
I am in the middle of leading two trips to my favorite places in NC – Pocosin Lakes and Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuges. This is a brief visual report on the first. Last week, I had four great folks from the Raleigh area join me for a wildlife viewing trip. We started at Pocosin Lakes… Read more…
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The Black and White of Pungo
To see in color is a delight for the eye but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul. ~Andri Cauldwell Last Wednesday, I headed to the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge to scout the area for an outing later that week. I’ll report on the outing in… Read more…
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More than Just Blue
When Nature made the bluebird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast…He is the peace-harbinger; in him the celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. ~John Burroughs, The Bluebird,… Read more…
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Light Geese
The Snow Goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself. ~Lao Tzu On one of my first Christmas Bird Counts over 25 years ago, at what was then Pungo National Wildlife Refuge (now the expanded Pocosin Lakes NWR), I ran into a well-known birder who was scoping… Read more…
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White Sands
The silence of nature is very real. It surrounds you, you can feel it. -Ted Trueblood A couple of hours east of Bosque is another naturalist and photographer destination – White Sands National Monument. The original plan was to drive down one afternoon, hike the dunes at sunset, spend the night in the nearby town… Read more…
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Bosque
Wherever there are birds, there is hope. ~Mehmet Murat ildan Bosque – say that to any birder or wildlife photographer, and they immediately know of what you speak. There is only one place that comes to mind – Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. It has been on my bucket list since… Read more…
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No Mere Bird
When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men. Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art,… Read more…
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The Shadow
I rejoice that there are owls… ~Henry David Thoreau I just returned from a very special place – Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. I came away with several thousand images, mostly of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes, the “stars” of Bosque. But in the predawn light and in the twilight after… Read more…
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The First 100
…The “need to hold still” is a skill that both scientists and non-scientists need to cultivate, a vital way to pay attention to the world. Through observation, it is possible to develop a richness of texture and nuance, substance and form, in our understanding of the animate and inanimate residents of this world – and… Read more…
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Roads End Naturalist 