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Black-necked Cranes on the Tibetan plateau were my last of this family and left me with some unexpectedly ambivalent feelings—triumph at having finally seen them all, yet sadness that there were now no more left to look for.

— Phoebe Snetsinger Birding on Borrowed Time (2003)

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More quotes by Phoebe Snetsinger

Emotion and personal desire really do reign in all passionate endeavors, not objectivity and reason. And sometimes we’re just plain lucky enough to get away with it.

Birding on Borrowed Time (2003)

I hadn’t done much traveling in Arab countries, and it’s certainly not my favorite culture (a common enough viewpoint among emancipated western women), but both geographically and ornithologically I found it fascinating.

Birding on Borrowed Time (2003)

“How can they ever get food into those fuzzy chicks without stabbing them to death with their bills?” Watching those creatures do what they had been doing successfully for millions of years, without any help from us, finally let me learn not to judge everything by human standards.

Birding on Borrowed Time (2003)

Chances are, if I can feel a lump, there has already been some spread to internal organs, in which case my time of health is probably limited to a few months. Now may well be my final opportunity to go birding on a foreign trip, and I can’t just throw that away. If it’s my last trip, so be it—but I’m going to make it a good one and go down binoculars in hand!

Birding on Borrowed Time (2003)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Phoebe Snetsinger (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.