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Now, More Than Ever
A poem for the new year, accompanied by a short video clip of a sunrise with tundra swans at the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge last week. May we all find peace in the coming year. The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me… Read more
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Christmas Bird Count
It’s never been easier to be a citizen scientist and it’s never been more important to be one. ~David Yarnold, President and CEO, National Audubon Society Earlier this week, we participated in one of my favorite holiday traditions, the annual Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count at Pettigrew State Park. I helped start this particular count… Read more
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Christmas Week Birds
To be standing together in a frosty field, looking up into the sky, marveling at birds and reveling in the natural world around us, was a simple miracle. And I wondered why we were so rarely able to appreciate it. ~Lynn Thomson While visiting Melissa’s family in Richmond, I often take walks around a section… Read more
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Follow the Nuthatch
Another of Melissa’s poems about birds (and one of the few rhyming ones she has written)… Follow the Nuthatch by Melissa Dowland When searching for a bird of prey On a fall or winter’s day Never trust the noisy titmice Only the nuthatch will suffice. The titmouse is a busy soul Forever making a dreadful… Read more
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Red-shoulders
The sparrow flying behind the hawk thinks the hawk is fleeing. ~Japanese proverb Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to work with my friend, Mary, to provide an introductory bird photography class at the NC Botanical Garden (NCBG) in Chapel Hill. It was next to the last in a series of programs that were part… Read more
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Persimmon Seeds
I talk to trees and animals. We have interesting conversations about food, weather, and love. They sometimes can predict the future. ~Shan Sa, author There is perhaps some truth in that sentiment, at least as far as the weather goes. Or so it seems based on the many tales and proverbs about how to predict… Read more
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Swamp’s Sentinels
Here’s another of Melissa’s poems that she read at the recent Poetry with Wings event at the NC Botanical Garden (paired with some of my images from our trips on the Roanoke River) … Swamp’s Sentinels by Melissa Dowland In the blackwater swamp The creeks are lined With cypress-sentinels Left whole by the loggers— Because… Read more
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Sanctuary in the Swamp
…when life looks sandy and barren, is reduced to its lowest terms, we have no appetite, and it has no flavour, then let me visit such a swamp as this, deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step, with its open water where swallows skim and twitter… ~Henry… Read more
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November Amphibians
…more different species of animals have been recorded at the Reserve than in any other comparably-sized area in the entire Piedmont. ~NC Botanical Garden web site regarding Mason Farm Biological Reserve It is an idyllic place in an otherwise rapidly developing region of our state…it is Mason Farm Biological Reserve. Mason Farm is about 367… Read more
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Roads End Naturalist 