Field Notes capture moments of attention in situ: observation from walks, travels, museums, vineyards, and working landscapes. Some are brief; others linger longer.
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Flourishing Fungi: Snow Fungus
By Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D., July 26, 2026 Location: Duke Forest, Durham, NC near New Hope Creek and Hollow Rock The humid air and moist ground had turned the world into a wonderland of the bizarre, letting loose towering white mushrooms that reached my knee, pairs of greenhouse millipedes entwined on trees, and a determined…
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Milkcap Mushrooms
Recent rains means it’s Milkcap Mushroom (Lactarius sp.) season! Did you know that North Carolina has an unusually important history of milkcap research? UNC mycologist William Chambers Coker published The Lactarias of North Carolina in 1918. A later assessment of the UNC Herbarium reported 456 milkcap specimens representing 76 species, and 355 of those specimens…
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The Rhythm of the Land
by Nicolette L. Cagle, July 22, 2026, Sennett’s Hole, Durham, NC The air is thick with the reverberations of cricket frogs that clatter, katydids that creak, and birds that burr. Between the pulsing choruses and punctuated calls, the river chatters, babbling over boulders and burbling through descending levels of metamorphic rock. A gentle wind pushes…
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Why Central Europe Is Such a Good Place to Learn Trees
by Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D., March 26, 2026Trees are among the clearest expressions of place. They root geology in biotic form, translate climate and water into a visible pattern, and hold the marks of both ecological time and human history. To learn the trees of a region is to do more than learn names; it…
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Öskjuhlíð, Iceland
We woke up and took a taxi to Öskjuhlíð with a driver named Viktor. We walked the waters edge, stepped on a sandy beach, climbed rocks to photograph Campions. We explored the edge of a runway, catching sight of a Whimbrel and Meadow Pipits. We turned around, tracing our steps along with shore and walking…
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Vigur Island Heritage Farm & Nature Reserve, Iceland
People have been living on Vigur Island for over 1,000 years. It’s been the site of a working farm since 1650. It’s the home of Iceland’s only historic windmill, built circa 1840/1860 and operational until 1912. The island’s house, called Viktoria’s House, was built in the mid-1800s as an engagement present from goldsmith, Sumarliði Sumarliðason,…
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Pettigrew State Park (Creswell, NC) & Pocosin Lakes NWR (Columbia, NC)
Each Spring, I make my way to Pettigrew State Park (Creswell, NC) to explore the rich vernal wildlife around North Carolina’s 2nd largest natural lake, Lake Phelps. Lake Phelps is one of the Carolina bay lakes – elliptical lakes aligned on a northwest-southeast axis of uncertain origin, hypothesized to have been carved out by ocean currents,…
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Return to Flat River Impoundment (Durham County, North Carolina)
Every September, many local lepidopteraphiles (butterfly lovers) make a pilgrimage to the Flat River Waterfowl Impoundment in northern Durham County, North Carolina. Located just north of Historic Stagville along Old Oxford Highway, the impoundment offers a gravel loop trail through wetland habitat. The area abounds with alternate wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia), passionflower (Passiflora incarnata), bitterweed (Helenium…
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New Hope Bottomlands Trail (Durham, NC)
The New Hope Creek Bottomlands Trail is a 2.2-mile loop located off SW Durham Drive in south Durham. At the moment, the access point at Sherwood Githens Middle School is closed. The best way to reach the trail is to park near the dumpster in the North Carolina Orthopaedic Center parking lot (3609 SW Durham…
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Temple Flat Rock (Wendell, Wake County, North Carolina)
Just outside Wendell, North Carolina (an eastern satellite town of Raleigh), Temple Flat Rock protects a striking expanse of exposed granite—about 5,270 square meters—that supports a specialized community of lichens, bryophytes, and flowering plants. In 1984, the Temple family donated this unusual Registered Natural Heritage Site to The Nature Conservancy. In the mid-1990s, stewardship transferred…