Category: Natural History
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Soundscapes
The sound of birds stops the noise in my mind. ~Carly Simon I was back in my favorite spot in North Carolina this past week – Pocosin Lakes NWR. A lot has changed on the refuge since my first visit back in the early 1980’s. Back then, you could walk almost anywhere this time of Read more…
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Our Busy Neighborhood
A good neighbor is a very desirable thing. ~Thomas Jefferson While we were in Montana for a couple of weeks last month, our wild neighbors were quite active. The trail cameras recorded lots of interesting snippets of what happens in our woods that we would otherwise not see. Here are a few of the highlights…(enlarge Read more…
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Critters on Camera
Our desire to document is bringing us closer to nature and to animals. ~Ruxandra Guidi It seems as though the cameras are catching more clips of extended behavior than in the past with our woodland neighbors pausing or maximizing their routes by the cameras so we catch just a little more of how they behave. Read more…
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Deersplaining
Now and then we hear the wilder voices of the wilderness, from animals that in the hours of darkness do not fear the neighborhood of man: the coyotes wail like dismal ventriloquists, or the silence may be broken by the snorting and stamping of a deer. ~Theodore Roosevelt Signs of the approach of Fall ar Read more…
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Coyote Capers
Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond… ~N. Scott Momaday On our last round of trail camera videos, we caught members of the local coyote clan in several places, often alone, and on a few occasions, as a group —-A Coyote trots by a trail Read more…
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Change is in the Air
Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald The change is happening…we have longed for it, and it is starting to tease us with the possibility of cooler nights and sunny, comfortable days. I see it in our woods as well in the plants and critters. New activity Read more…
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Dog Days
Now came the dog days – day after day of hot, still summer, when for hours at a time light seemed the only thing that moved… ~Richard Adams The last week has provided a nice break from the typical heat and humidity of this time of year, the so-called dog days of August. Historically, the Read more…
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Night Beauties
There is something to be said for the night. The darkness holds a sense of promise, as if anything could happen. ~Meg Collett The frequent evening storms have kept me from setting up my moth lights, so with a break in the rain earlier this week, I jumped at the opportunity. I was feeling a Read more…
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Mountain High
Wherever we go in the mountains, we find more than we seek. ~John Muir My long-time friend, Scott, is working at Mount Mitchell State Park this summer so I decided to pay him a visit last week. It was good timing, since the predicted high temperature here at home was in the mid- to upper Read more…
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In Our Happy Place Part 2
[The public lands represent] in a sense, the breathing space of the nation. ~Richard Nixon After Melissa joined her group of educators, I had a few days in Yellowstone on my own. You shouldn’t be surprised that I wanted to spend as much as time as possible out in it, watching wildlife, staying away from Read more…
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Roads End Naturalist 