Category: Natural History
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Flashes of Red
I want to create red in a world that often appears black and white. ~Terry Tempest Williams Another gray day here in the woods, but the plants I put in the ground yesterday are appreciating it. Looking out the window, I can see spots of color in the yard – the blooms of Coreopsis, some… Read more…
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Cashie Calling
My favourite places on earth are the wild waterways where the forest opens its arms and a silver curve of river folds the traveller into its embrace. ~ Rory MacLean This is the second post on our recent canoe/camping trip in eastern North Carolina (see previous post here). We departed the Cypress Cathedral camping platform… Read more…
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Swamping Again
The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten. ~Sigurd F. Olson The Swamp Queen (aka Melissa) did it again…planned a canoe/camping adventure to our favorite swamp destination, the Roanoke River. So, last week, we headed east to spend a planned 6 days paddling over 50 miles… Read more…
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Squirrely Behavior
…for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators… ~Henry David Thoreau Yesterday I posted about deer communication through scent at a community scrape. Are the other animals in our woods communicating to one another with scent? Do they have their own “social media sites”? I… Read more…
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Woodland Social Media
Every act of communication is a miracle of translation. ~Ken Liu I recognize a buck scrape in our woods when I see one. It is a bare patch of earth with lots of hoof scrapes and deer tracks under an overhanging low limb (usually an evergreen). One or more twigs are often broken from the… Read more…
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More Bang for the Buck(s)
The life of the wood, meadow, and lake go on without us. Flowers bloom, set seed and die back; squirrels hide nuts in the fall and scold all year long; bobcats track the snowy lake in winter; deer browse the willow shoots in spring. Humans are but intruders who have presumed the right to be… Read more…
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Fly Like an Eagle
I know he’d be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly. ~John Denver A couple of weeks ago I made a trip over to the B. Everett Jordan Dam about 25 minutes from our house. I had seen a lot of images recently on social media of the Bald Eagles that tend… Read more…
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Opossum Afterlife
Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides. ~Lao Tzu One day earlier this month I discovered a recently deceased Virginia Opossum out by one of the wood piles. No idea what might have happened to it though it was not long after some severely cold weather. I decided to… Read more…
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Mustelid Moments
We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. ~Henry David… Read more…
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Sharing with Friends
To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand in the cold. ~Aristotle This is the second post from our January trip to Yellowstone. After spending a few days scouting the northern range of the park and hanging out with some Montana friends, a group of eight NC friends flew out to… Read more…
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Roads End Naturalist 