Corrie Herring Hooks

1 primary work • 2 total works

Before the Echo

by Pete Dunne

Published 1 June 1995

"The natural world is a lot like a game of musical chairs," observes Pete Dunne. "Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, there are places where living things sit down, niches that support their specific needs. But just as in musical chairs, there aren't enough places to go around. Our species keeps removing them—forcing other creatures to leave the game."

In these twenty-nine essays, one of America's top nature writers trains his sights on the beauties and the vulnerabilities of the natural world. Writing to infuse others with a sense of the richness and diversity that nature holds, Pete Dunne ranges over topics from the wonder of the year's first snowfall to the lost art of stargazing to the mysterious forces that impel people to hunt—and not to hunt. Running like a thread through all the essays is Dunne's desire to preserve all that is "natural" in nature, to stop our unthinking destruction of wild places and wild creatures before we humans find ourselves with "the last chair, in an empty room" on an impoverished earth.

Golden Wings

by Pete Dunne

Published 1 March 2003

Dubbed the "Bard of America's Bird-Watchers" by the Wall Street Journal, Pete Dunne knows birders and birding - instinctively and completely. He understands the compulsion that drives other birders to go out at first light, whatever the weather, for a chance to maybe, just maybe, glimpse that rare migrant that someone might have spotted in a patch of woods the day before yesterday. And yet, he also knows how ...well ...strange the birding obsession becomes when viewed through the eyes of a nonbirder. His dual perspective - totally engrossed in birding, yet still aware of the "odd birdness" of some birders - makes reading his essays a pure pleasure whether you pursue "the feather quest" or not. This book collects forty-one of Dunne's recent essays, drawn from his columns in "Living Bird", "Wild Bird News", the "New Jersey Sunday" section of the "New York Times", "Birder's World", and other publications.
Written with his signature wit and insight, they cover everything from a moment of awed communion with a Wandering Albatross ("the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen") to Dunne's imagined "perfect bird" ("The Perfect Bird is the size of a turkey, has the wingspan of an eagle, the legs of a crane, the feet of a moorhen, and the talons of a great horned owl. It eats kudzu, surplus zucchini, feral cats, and has been known to predate upon homeowners who fire up their lawn mowers before 7:00 A.M. on the weekend."). The title essay pays whimsical, yet heartfelt tribute to Dunne's mentor, the late birding legend Roger Tory Peterson.