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Hatching
The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell. ~Zora Neale Hurston A quick update on the tulip-tree silk moth eggs from my last post – they hatched! The moth laid eggs inside the container on the night of May 19. They started hatching early in the morning… Read more
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Giants of the Night
From behind its head came two large “feathers” that projected forward…This butterfly has antlers, I thought in awe. ~John Cody, moth artist, describing his first childhood encounter with a giant silkmoth Something caught me eye one morning as I approached the outside door leading upstairs to my office. It looked a bit like a dried… Read more
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They Are Catching More Than Just Gnats
may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living ~ee cummings Here is a long overdue update on those little birds that nested just outside the garden driveway gate at the Botanical Garden…I am happy to report these diligent parents were apparently successful in rearing their young. You may… Read more
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Big Jaws
The naturalist suffers a pleasant nuisance – not being able to walk 100 yards without being tied to the spot by some new and wondrous creature. ~Charles Darwin I’m afraid this applies to me and is often why it takes so long to hike (saunter is probably a better term for what I usually do)… Read more
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Cope-ing with the Rains
If we can discover the meaning in the trilling of a frog, perhaps we may understand why it is for us not merely noise but a song of poetry and emotion. ~Adrian Forsyth My apologies for once again using this corny phrase in a post about Cope’s Gray Treefrogs (see previous post about their life… Read more
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Where Insects Fear to Tread
There is no exquisite beauty …without some strangeness. ~Edgar Allan Poe Part two of our quest for carnivorous plants took us first to the Green Swamp, a well-known NC Nature Conservancy preserve site in Brunswick and Columbus counties. It was getting late in the day, so we went straight to the main access point, a… Read more
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Bay Watch
Find one, and you’ll find yourself closer to the heart of what a Carolina Bay can be: an island of wildness in a world largely tamed, a few acres of the primeval past passed over by progress. ~T. Edward Nickens The North Carolina Botanical Garden has an exquisite collection of carnivorous plants, and they are… Read more
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Catching Gnats and Plucking Lichens
More than with most species of small birds, the attention and interest of the observer center about the nesting habits of the blue-gray gnatcatcher because of the great beauty of its nest. ~Francis Marion Weston, 1949 One of my favorite spring arrivals is the plucky little blue-gray gnatcatcher. It is tiny, but bold. It looks… Read more
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Unfurling
Only spread a fern frond over a man’s head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in. ~John Muir Before there is a fern frond, there is a fiddlehead. The curled tip of an unfurling fern frond resembles the curled ornamentation (called a scroll) on the end of a… Read more
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Swarming Season
The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it. ~Jacques Yves Cousteau Just at closing one day this week, a coworker at the Garden sent an email alerting everyone to a swarm of honeybees just outside the back gate. I was… Read more
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Roads End Naturalist 