Roads End Naturalist

Exploring the natural world as we wander at the end of the road


Tag: chatham county

  • Pink Horn

    It’s the horns of a dilemma, no question about it. ~Steven Jeffrey Melissa needed a few caterpillars for a teacher workshop this week, so I went out the other night with our UV flashlight to scan the vegetation around the house. A reminder that many species of caterpillars glow under UV light at night, making Read more…

  • What is That?

    The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new… ~Henry F. Schaefer, III Last night we had friends over for pizza and beer and …mothing (wait, what?, you mean you don’t have people over and put out a moth light when it is 90 degrees and 95% humidity?). Read more…

  • Summer Scenes

    The night still twinkles with fireflies but the day’s heat lingers and the air has a dusty August scent, the smell of languid Summer. ~Hal Borland We are definitely in the Dog Days of Summer, the heat and humidity making me rethink my desire to be out and about in the afternoon. But, it only Read more…

  • Trail Cam Delights

    Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us. ~Boris Pasternak The heat of summer seems to have slowed the activity around the trail cameras in our woods, but sometimes, amid all the images of squirrels, raccoons, and wind blown leafy branches, there is is a jewel that really makes me appreciate the 24-hour Read more…

  • More of the Little Things in Life

    If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. ~Emily Dickinson I’ve been wandering around the yard again, camera in hand, looking for the little things that might be living alongside us. The heat of summer tends to make a lot of the big things (like me) a bit Read more…

  • Glimpses of Life in the Woods

    Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world. ~John Muir There is so much we see when we spend time in nature, but having a few trail cameras set out shows how much we miss. Here are a few of the wildlife happenings our three cameras caught over the past couple of Read more…

  • It’s the Small Things

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    Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination. ~Rudolf Arnheim I’m blaming it on our month-long trip out West Read more…

  • Swarms

    What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bees. ~Marcus Aurelius Earlier this week I was walking down in our woods mid-day, switching out the memory cards in our trail cameras, when I came across a termite emergence near the opossum hole. What I noticed first was a group of large Read more…

  • 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…

  • 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…