Pete Dunne

Pete Dunne (born September 16, 1951) is an American author who writes about natural history and birding.

Dunne on the Cape May Hawkwatching platform during the 2009 migration season

Quotes

The Feather Quest: A North American Birder's Year (1992)

All page numbers are from the trade paperback edition published by Mariner Books in 1999, ISBN 0-395-92790-0, 1st printing

Italics as in the book

• To a child, there is nothing in the world quite so important as growing up.
  • Prologue, “Birthday Present” (p. xxvi)

• She didn’t ask why I left, because that’s a silly question. I left for the same reason all people leave home. Because one day you realize that all the old habits have become too familiar. Because there is a world of discovery waiting and the first step toward the future is a step away from the past. So you leave. Go chasing rainbows, never thinking that maybe one end of a rainbow is just as good as another.
  • Chapter 1, “Whippany, New Jersey: Birding with the Kid” (p. 12)

• In the free-for-all age before conservation, scientists were not the only ones “collecting” birds. Great numbers of birds were killed for sport and for market, and the myth of America’s inexhaustible resources sustained the slaughter past the point of reason.
  • Chapter 2, “Newburyport, Massachusetts: River and Roots” (p. 19)

• Very few works of art, however skillfully crafted, can approach the splendor of a living bird.
  • Chapter 5, “Rio Grande Valley, Texas: The Valley” (p. 63)

• Dawn was just getting serious. One of the rarely spoken advantages to being a birder are the number of sunrises you get to appreciate in the course of a lifetime. Most people come onto a day full blown—to a sun already high in the sky, a world already in motion, and the impossible task of catching up. They rarely see the tentative side of morning or appreciate the great struggle between light and darkness played out on a world stage. Some mornings come raging over the horizon, angry and red. Some are so subtle that the transformation of night and day seems like an afterthought. All are different and all are priceless.
  • Chapter 5, “Rio Grande Valley, Texas: The Valley” (p. 66)

• But since it was birders he was dealing with, there wasn’t any harm just letting us in on the honor system. There was no question in his mind (or ours) that we would ante up when departing. That’s just the way birders are.
  • Chapter 8, “Point Pelee, Ontario: Impact at the Omega Point” (p. 107)

• Zero impact in a fragile land. The only ethic that should be tolerated in the Arctic.
  • Chapter 11, “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska: Birding Beyond the Ken” (p. 174)

• So I came, in time, to disbelieve the Myth of Infinite because I know, now, that the resources of a continent are more finite than human greed. I discovered that freedom can be twisted, can mean that anything a person can grab is his and to hell with everyone else. I learned that the twisted freedom that allows people to destroy a place conflicts with my freedom to appreciate it and the freedom of other living things to survive.
  • Chapter 11, “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska: Birding Beyond the Ken” (p. 182)

• The bird is a mouse. A frustrating, feathered mouse, no more inclined to be seen by mortal eyes than your average leprechaun.
  • Chapter 12, “Manitoba, Canada: Have Bins, Will Travel” (p. 193; referring to the Yellow Rail)

• Seasickness all comes down to a complicated and not terribly well thought-out balancing mechanism call the inner ear. Without a shred of supporting evidence, I believe that inner ears were eleventh-hour modifications installed in the human unit just before the model was released. It was faulty and we’re still waiting for the recall. (Knees fall into this category, too.)
  • Chapter 15, “Monterey, California: Shearwater Journeys” (p. 245)

• It’s hard to recall now that this environmental beacon was once a battlefield and that there was a time when people did not understand the important role birds of prey play in maintaining natural balance. It’s difficult to believe that people’s ignorance was so complete that they thought of hawks as vermin and shot them on sight.
  • Chapter 17, “Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania: The Endless Mountain” (pp. 272-273)

• They were sport gunners, too—a class spawned by wealth and leisure who carried their “sport” to tasteless Victorian excess. Both professional and the sport hunter approached the killing of “game” with zeal and the conviction that North America’s wildlife was infinite. The faith was ill-founded. Not only is a continent’s wildlife finite, but, to the shock of many, by the turn of the century much of it was gone and a lot more was going fast.
  • Chapter 18, “Sacramento Valley and Tule Lake, California: Storms of Wings” (p. 286)

• Since Benjamin Franklin’s eloquent bad-mouthing of the bird when the time came to select a national emblem, the Bald Eagle has been an unjust target for abuse. Its taste for winter-killed fish has made it a “carrion eater.” Its talent for close-range aerial pursuit has made it a “thief.” Its penchant for sitting for long periods and not expending energy without need has made it “lazy,” and this is not fair. Only humans seem to equate frenetic activity with success. Eagles can and do sit for extended periods precisely because they are successful predators who can find food at need. Energy wasted is just that. A waste.
  • Chapter 18, “Sacramento Valley and Tule Lake, California: Storms of Wings” (p. 293)

• Many condors were simply shot. No, they weren’t edible. No, their feathers weren’t prized adornments for ladies’ headgear. Despite their size, they posed no threat to humans or livestock. Yet there are nearly two hundred documented cases of condors that were killed for no better reason than to satisfy somebody’s perverted vanity.
  • Chapter 19, “Los Padres National Forest, California: Ghost Dancing on Mount Pinos” (p. 300)

• The one thing you can’t do with binoculars is look back.
  • Chapter 19, “Los Padres National Forest, California: Ghost Dancing on Mount Pinos” (p. 301)

• Hope is many things, but it throws itself against fact and shatters.
  • Chapter 19, “Los Padres National Forest, California: Ghost Dancing on Mount Pinos” (p. 304)