Field and Swamp: Animals and Their Habitats

Why visit this wildlife photos website?

The main goal of this website is to make easily available basic information about a wide diversity of wildlife in Piedmont North Carolina (and a few other places, mostly in the same state).  We designed this site to be accessible to the zoology beginner, but have also given it features that allow those experienced in the field to find their way to photos of particular species and accompanying information.   Most of the animals on this website are easy to locate and see in the habitats where they were found, and can generally be seen easily with ordinary binoculars or magnifying glasses, even by those with relatively poor vision.   We have also tried to minimize the language barrier by making both images and names the means for first contact with the material.

What you will see here is a learning process involving not simply the discovery of hundreds of species of animals ranging from birds and butterflies to obscure insects such as water boatmen and rhopalid bugs but their identification: sometimes just an animal's family, sometimes the genus and species.   These identifications were made according to reference sources and with the help of many individuals, some of which are recognized experts in their fields.  In the cases of unfamiliar animals, citations give the source of the reference source used.  Since it is sometimes impossible to determine the species of an animal by its outward appearance alone, some of these identifications are necessarily guesses; we have done our best to convey our level of doubt based on these difficulties.  We encourage our visitors to check out these identifications against recognized authorities as well or to use their own expertise in discovering errors: please report any such errors to us at Contact Us.

This site is a tribute to the successful work of conservationists in a major metropolitan area.  They have ensured an abundance of wildlife even in at least one fairly large city (Durham, NC) and have made it possible for natural habitats housing  animals of even relatively rare species to be found within the limits of that city and in neighboring areas. 

Notes on Taxonomy:  Although the main emphasis of this website is on celebrating nature and the conservationists successfully protecting it, it also explores the process of taxonomic change currently affecting a number of animal species.   Learning about local biodiversity leads naturally to curiosity about the relationships among differences species of animals.  There are many points of view among the most knowledgeable people in this area, and it is difficult for an outsider to present observations about this without including some level of subjectivity.  I hope that these personal reactions will draw more interest to these important developments and emphasize the great challenge in these undertakings, which may eventually lead to solving some of the major problems facing the world: killer diseases and the destruction of our natural resources, which in turn leads to starvation and war.

This is a time of taxonomic upheaval, now that genome-mapping is in full swing and challenging previous assumptions.   Taxonomy is no longer based exclusively on obvious "macro" characteristics within a simple, largely subjectively determined hierarchy: it is increasingly governed by cladistics, which determines classifications based on the relative placement of organisms in a hypothetical evolutionary tree via algorithms evaluating both similarities and differences of the organisms concerned.   These characteristics now include their anatomy and physiology, their chemistry, and their behavior.  Technological innovation has made genetic analysis a bigger part of this process, but decoding animal DNA is inevitably dependent on observation of a variety of animal characteristics.  Consensus on final classification decisions is far in the future, so there is probably a great deal in this pages to disagree with.  We have cited a variety of authoritative sources for the classifications presented here and have done our best to be current.

A new proposed solution to the taxonomic controversy problem is ZooBank, proposed by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, based at London's Natural History Museum, according to The Economist (p. 75, February 11, 2006).   This effort is just beginning and mainly has some ground rules laid down.

Disclaimer:  This website is the product of an independent naturalist, with the occasional volunteered help of several professional field biologists and others with demonstrated expertise in the field.  Although I welcome such help when it is volunteered, I have relied mainly on reference books and visits to other websites.  This site lists my sources of information, both on relevant pages and on the Acknowledgements and References Page.  I take full responsibility for any errors and make no guarantees of correctness of information.  I invite all visitors to my website to inform me of any presented facts needing correction; I make changes requested by authorities in relevant fields according to my best understanding of what they wish.  I cannot, however, take responsibility for making changes that have not been requested.  Taxonomic classifications presented are not meant to represent all known classifications, or to imply that all possible classifications have been done.  This website is in a constant process of evolution and represents an ongoing learning process.  Its content is still expanding and its structure is undergoing changes.   Anthropomorphic interpretations of animal behavior are made mostly about birds and are meant strictly for the amusement of the site visitor.