Category: Natural History
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Bodie Island
I think the most important quality in a birdwatcher is a willingness to stand quietly and see what comes. Our everyday lives obscure a truth about existence – that at the heart of everything there lies a stillness and a light. ~Lynn Thomson After a rainy first day at Pungo, I headed to the coast,… Read more…
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Refuge Ramble – Pocosin Lakes and Mattamuskeet
Our public lands – whether a national park or monument, wildlife refuge, forest or prairie – make each one of us land-rich. It is our inheritance as citizens of a country called America. ~Terry Tempest Williams Last week was another of those times I really appreciate our public lands. I spent four days on the… Read more…
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1 Bird, 2 Birds, …and some cool other stuff
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own. ~Charles Dickens This past Thursday was our annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count at Pettigrew State Park. As usual, Melissa and I covered our part of the count circle, much of the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. We had planned to… Read more…
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Nutcracker
Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You plant it in the ground and it explodes into an oak. ~George Bernard Shaw The trail cameras have been busy these past few months with lots of images of squirrels (too many), raccoons, opossums, two coyotes (finally, I was beginning to wonder what happened), a… Read more…
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Stealth Fighter
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak and stared with his foot on the prey. ~Lord Alfred Tennyson One day last week as I was walking through the bedroom, I glanced out the back window and saw something on a tree trunk just beyond the deer fence. This tree has fallen to… Read more…
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Keeping Current – The Wild Things
Rivers are places that renew our spirit, connect us with our past, and link us directly with the flow and rhythm of the natural world. ~Ted Turner My only regret from our canoe camping trip last month was that I did not bring my usual camera gear to record some of the wonderful wildlife we… Read more…
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Keeping Current – The River
The rivers flow not past, but through us… ~John Muir it has been a little over a month since our paddling adventure. I’m finally getting around to sharing some of the incredible memories from that trip. My knee has been causing some real problems these past few months so we agreed to try a paddling… Read more…
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Things You Might Not See
Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. ~ Francis Pharcellus Church It had been over a week since I checked the three trail cameras, so I was anxious to see what had transpired in our patch of woods without us knowing. There has been a definite… Read more…
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BugFest Beauties
Bugs are not going to inherit the earth. They own it now. So we might as well make peace with the landlord. ~Thomas Eisner If it is September, it must be time for BugFest, the premier annual special event of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. In years past, it has ranked as the… Read more…
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Butterflies, Blooms, and Bears
Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January. ~Hal Borland I headed down to Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge last week for an “end of summer” day trip (actually more of a “before hunting season begins” road trip).… Read more…
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Roads End Naturalist 