Chasing Nature

Chasing Nature caters to birdwatchers, plant enthusiasts, and everyone who enjoys exploring the outdoors, whether from their backyards or from the comfort of their homes. It appeals to nature lovers, creative thinkers, outdoor photographers, and anyone looking to find solace in nature and reflect on human experiences.

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The Vulture's Memoir

2 weeks ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

Greetings, readers: Here’s my contribution to an evening of poetry, verse, and music celebrating National Poetry Month and Poem City here in Montpelier, Vermont, a few days ago. Also, please scroll onward to the spring beauties below and my note to Chasing Nature’s paying subscribers. Thanks!GRANTED, I’m not an early bird. I sleep through the confetti of warblers at dawn, and then doze with one eye open to the humans below me going about their rituals.
The Problem with Butterflies

1 month ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

THEIR BEAUTY AND GRACE alone would seem to warrant at least some measure of loyalty and reciprocity on our part. And that is to say nothing of how they’ve become iconic in our culture — from poetry to jewelry, spirituality to tattoos. So by now you’d think we would have found a way to get along with butterflies. Nope, sorry. Despite their glitter and charisma, we humans are destroying butterflies in far too many places — and therefore making the world less beautiful and less interesting.
First in Flower

1 month ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

A Note from Bryan: Because I’m out of action owing to successful knee surgery on Monday, here from the archives is a timely and updated dispatch that most of my readers have not seen, and which makes me happy because even while enduring severe post-operative pain I can nonetheless bring you vernal opportunity. FOR MANY OF US, the earliest hints of spring are not green — they are red. Maple trees are breaking out in explosions of crimson flowers. Flowers? Where are the petals in those images above?
"Running Talus" Revisited

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

Although this essay is more personal than usual here at Chasing Nature, I believe it has universal relevance (even for those of you who don’t run wild in mountains). HALF A CENTURY AGO, as a 17-year-old boy, which is to say a fairly naive lump of flesh, I lived to touch rock and defy gravity. Before I knew much of anything about the world or gained any genuine sense of myself, I was a mountaineer.
Lies and Light

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

DISHONESTY has been in the news of late. And yet long before humans arrived on the scene to tell them, lies have been a way of life on Earth. Opossums feign death to trick predators. Caterpillars can resemble anything from snakes to twigs to bird shit. And certain plants look like rotting flesh, attracting flies that become unwitting pollinators. Fraud in nature is evolution in action — wild things doing whatever to get by in the struggle for existence.
A Butterfly is a Place

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

LET’S BE HONEST about the genus Callophrys: with a few green exceptions, these aren’t exactly charismatic butterflies. Known as elfins and green hairstreaks, Callophrys (kah-LOW-fris) butterflies perch with their wings folded closed above their bodies, at which point they become about the size of a penny — and only somewhat more ornate. The Callophrys have never inspired much poetry or gained any traction on social media. They’ve not been a cause célèbre of demonstrations or protest marches.
A Wild Swarm of Dragonflies

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

IN PERHAPS the most crude and magnificent description of their lives, dragonflies basically do three things: fly around, kill insects, and have crazy sex. (Sometimes they have sex while flying around, but not while killing insects). Sure, dragonflies do other things. They themselves try not to be killed, for example, and certain species migrate great distances, even across oceans.
Sexual Identity Among Red Dragonflies

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

NO MATTER how uncertain our lives, how troubled our politics, even how dire or existential the threats to humanity, at least one thing is reliable and wonderful across much of the world right now: the red dragonflies of summer. Named “meadowhawks” or “darters,” depending on where you live, they dash and hunt and pose in meadows, at ponds and wetlands, even beside watery roadside ditches. All of which would be routine and audacious enough for dragonflies — and for us.
Wet Liverwort Sex

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

IN ORDER TO WITNESS the sex life of the Common Liverwort, which goes by the charming scientific name Marchantia polymorpha, you must first of course find this plant growing in some damp or rocky place. For me this should not have been a problem. After all, Marchantia (mar-CAN-tee-uh), as it can be affectionately known, is among the most cosmopolitan plants on Earth, growing as a flattened, spreading “thallus” that might be mistaken for a green lichen or perhaps some kind of moss.
2025: The Year in Preview

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

FOR all the intrinsic uncertainty in the world, we humans sure like to predict the future. Weather forecasting works to our benefit. But we don’t seem as prescient about warfare, nation building, pandemics, or politics — our leaders and pundits too often get that stuff wrong. It’s much easier to predict what’s next in nature — and there’s a certain irony in that.