The Chasing Nature Index

Tricolored Heron / © Bryan Pfeiffer

This index is organized mostly according to what flies, walks, hops, slithers, swims or just sits there evolving or decaying — from birds to plants to fossils. Every essay is also about us, of course, and our place in the world. If your time is scarce and precious (and whose isn’t?), the index begins with curated favorites. Thanks for being here.

BRYAN’S FAVORITES

Virtue in a Little Brown Butterfly

How I Touched Extinction

Honoring Dead Butterflies

A Duplicitous Flower and its Rare Bee

1.8 Billion Years of the Sublime (in Three Minutes of Reading)

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BIRDS

The Mushroom and the Songbird

Look Up: Hawks Aloft

Among the Songbirds, My Fading Serenade

The Gentle Rain of Songbirds

Reading, Writing and Wrens

GETTING GULLS

The Snowy Owls Are Coming For Us

A Gull Barfing by the Sea

Hawks and Humans on a Burning Planet

A Songbird Underwater

When Songbirds Fall to Earth

Vultures and the Culture Wars

The Eagle and the Gull

Birdwatching's Carbon Problem

Arctic Owls on a Warming Planet

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BUTTERFLIES and MOTHS

A Butterfly is a Place

The Little Butterflies You’re Overlooking

NOTICING

The Butterfly of Doom and Light

Sex and Flight in the Cold

After the Flood

The Perils and Joy of Butterflies at Sea

White Whales, Sea Glass and Butterfly Sex

The Moth and the Flame

The Week in Pink Things

Virtue in a Little Brown Butterfly

Blood, Death, Deception and a Defiant Moth

Gossamer and Metal

Honoring Dead Butterflies

Fakery and an Insect

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CLIMATE / BIODIVERSITY / EXTINCTION

A Flower, a Butterfly, a Flood

Hawks and Humans on a Burning Planet

Our New High-Water Mark

The Smoke We Breathe

Virtue in a Little Brown Butterfly

A Digest: Butterflies, Birds, Extinction and Hope

Honoring Dead Butterflies

Can Nations Really Save Nature?

Birdwatching's Carbon Problem

How I Touched Extinction

Arctic Owls on a Warming Planet

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DRAGONFLIES

Sex and Identity Among Red Dragonflies

A Remarkable Swarm of Dragonflies

Life, Death and Dragonflies

Dirty Damselflies

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BOTANY

Wet Liverwort Sex

The Meaning of Love

Sympathy for a Killer

The Flamboyance of a Common Flower

SHRINKING VIOLETS

A New Year and an Ancient Plant

A Duplicitous Flower and its Rare Bee

A Substack Field Trip for Twinflower

On Earth Day: Flowers of Naked Woods

Twitter, Notes and Sacred Wildflowers

Blood, Death, Deception and a Defiant Moth

Red Alert

The Eroticism and Mythology of the Naked Bud

Fakery and an Insect

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WAR, PEACE, CIVILITY, HOPE and JOY

The Mushroom and the Songbird

A Caterpillar Doing a Flip

FALLING

Silent Spring: A Retrospective and a Question

The Meaning of Love

The Eclipse Within Our Grasp

The Harmony and Irony of March

Lincoln, Darwin and Nature

After the Flood

The Nature of War

Twitter, Notes and Sacred Wildflowers

Vultures and the Culture Wars

1.8 Billion Years of the Sublime (in Three Minutes of Reading)

Between Bombs and Butterflies

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SEX

Sex and Identity Among Red Dragonflies

Wet Liverwort Sex

NOTICING

Pandemonium in a Pond

Errors and Opportunities

Males Need Not Apply

Sex in the Daylight

The Eroticism and Mythology of the Naked Bud

Blackbirds, a Mule and Polygamy

Dirty Damselflies

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GENERAL NATURE STUDY

A Parasite, Clickbait and Honesty

Earth Day: Fifty Shades of Red

The Harmony and Irony of March

The Kingdom of Tiny Things

For Learning in the Natural World, the Book Is Better

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