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Completing the Circle
I’ve always loved butterflies, because they remind us that it’s never too late to transform ourselves. ~Drew Barrymore Last year I finally had success in photographing a chrysalis of a beautiful spring-time butterfly, the Falcate Orange-tip. I collected four eggs and their host plants and brought them inside to rear because I had no success… Read more
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Return to Merchants Millpond
Paradise is just a paddle away. ~Author unknown When I worked as a District Naturalist for the state park system oh-so-many years ago, one of my favorite parks was Merchants Millpond State Park in northeastern North Carolina. It is a true natural gem of our state and remains one of my favorite spots to spend… Read more
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Refuges as refuge
For every day of loneliness we endure, we’ll spend a day in communion with the life around us until the loneliness passes away. ~Richard Louv If you have read previous posts on this blog, you know that we are lucky to live in a beautiful wooded setting with abundant wildlife from insects to birds. But… Read more
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Changes
Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day. ~W. Earl Hall It’s coming. We can see it and hear it in our woods. The big change is near – the approach of spring in the Piedmont! The first warm days last weekend ushered in a host of… Read more
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Plants, People, Privilege?
soft-soled sneakers step through messy mud, slip on stained stepping stones, dealing death-blows to decades of root work, rhizomes, winter rosettes of limp leaves no longer lifelike, lingering bereft, half-buried, burdened by compaction and lack of traction and human tracks from soft-soled sneakers, sealed over brown feet, belonging to bodies of brown men marching mindless of… Read more
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Living in the Wet Woods
Nana always said the rain was nature’s way of adding sparkle to the outdoors. ~Mehmet Murat Ildan Surely the woods are sparkling now after what seems like weeks of rain. We actually have had some occasional nice weather, but the past few days have been soakers. Our clay soils have added some slickness to our… Read more
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A Week in Winter
If one could take the cover off the ground in the fields and woods in winter, or have some magic ointment put upon his eyes that would enable him to see through opaque substances, how many curious and interesting forms of life he would behold in the ground beneath his feet as he took his… Read more
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Air Traffic Uncontrolled
A song is like a picture of a bird in flight; the bird was moving before the picture was taken, and no doubt continued after. ~Pete Seeger The Evening Grosbeaks continue to delight us by devouring sunflower seeds every morning in a feeding frenzy of yellow, black and white. My high count was one day… Read more
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Wildlife Neighbors
There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story. ~Linda Hogan I recently bought another trail camera and have been putting them out in our woods the past few weeks trying to document who shares our… Read more
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Wood-hen in the hood
The bird already possessed a common name; and it is a pity that Latham did not know it. In its native land it was, and still is, commonly called, the log-cock…and because of its cackling cry, “wood-hen,” “laughing woodpecker,”… ~in Life Histories of Familiar North American Birds, Arthur Cleveland Bent, 1939 My father called them… Read more
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Roads End Naturalist 