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Quotes from The Feather Quest: A North American Birder's Year — Pete Dunne

born 1951 United States

← All quotes by Pete Dunne

10 quotes

Hope is many things, but it throws itself against fact and shatters.

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

Zero impact in a fragile land. The only ethic that should be tolerated in the Arctic.

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

The bird is a mouse. A frustrating, feathered mouse, no more inclined to be seen by mortal eyes than your average leprechaun.

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

Very few works of art, however skillfully crafted, can approach the splendor of a living bird.

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

The one thing you can’t do with binoculars is look back.

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

To a child, there is nothing in the world quite so important as growing up.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Pete Dunne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.