A Naturalist's Guide to the Virginia Coast

by Curtis J. Badger

As Curtis Badger will tell you, "Being a good naturalist has more to do with being an enthusiastic observer than traveling to distant places. It is more a matter of curiosity than of a need for adventure, a frame of mind rather than peculiarity of place." A Naturalist’s Guide to the Virginia Coast will indeed incite an enthusiastic interest in that special place where the land meets the sea. Among Badger’s goals is to draw the observer beyond the armchair and reading lamp, the museum and classroom, and outdoors onto the beaches and tidal flats of the Virginia coast to experience its rich natural diversity firsthand. And Feel the mud between your toes on the tidal flats at Chincoteague; walk the sandy beach at Back Bay; pedal a bike along the Cape Henry Trail at First Landing State Park. Informative as a guidebook―complete with sections on Virginia’s primary coastal wilderness areas and appendices listing where to go and what to look for― A Naturalist’s Guide also serves as a natural history primer, offering clear and concise chapters on the ecological, historical, and botanical background of the region Badger explores. For the parent adventuring with a curious child or the experienced birder in new territory, the weekend wanderer or the seasoned naturalist, Curtis Badger’s user-friendly guide provides an engaging discussion about just the sorts of wondrous things the interested observer will encounter on a visit to Virginia’s coastline. handy family guide to Virginia's diverse coastline from the Eastern Shore's favorite naturalist

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A naturalist can help one see nature in a whole new way – as an intricately linked ecosystem, with its parts working together in a quiet and wondrous harmony. And Curtis J. Badger, a naturalist and freelance writer from the Eastern Shore town of Onancock, Virginia, offers just that sort of insight for the nature-minded reader in his 1996 book A Naturalist’s Guide to the Virginia Coast.

Coastal Virginia begins with the Eastern Shore counties of Accomack and Northampton - two localities that are separated by Chesapeake Bay from the rest of the commonwealth. South of the Delmarva Peninsula, once one has travelled from Cape Charles down to Cape Henry, the Virginia coast continues with the oceanfront portions of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, beyond which one finds the Back Bay national wildlife refuge, the singularly isolated False Cape state park, and then, finally, William Byrd II's "dividing line" and the northern boundary of North Carolina. Badger knows every inch of that beachfront, as he makes clear in chapters treating the landscape, seascape, plants, birds, and people of the Virginia coast.

Badger's writing often takes on a lyrical quality, as when he says of coastal Virginia’s salt marshes that

The salt marsh is a living ecosystem, and the plants that live there continuously adapt to changes in their environment, be they changes of season or sea level or interruption by humans. Marsh plants are at once fragile and resilient, specialized and opportunistic. And they possess a beauty that changes as the seasons change. An expansive salt marsh presents an enduring landscape, a signature of the Virginia coast. (p. 25)

Any good naturalist will tell you that the wild needs to be experienced, not merely read about in books or “surfed” on websites. Accordingly, it is good that Badger emphasizes the magic of the discoveries that he has made in his peregrinations along the Virginia coast:

Once I found a fossilized inner ear bone of a whale lying at the base of a dune, washed up by a recent storm. It looked at first like a small, misshapen human skull. Then it looked like a giant tooth. An anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution explained what it was. He gave me a diagram of the whale skull and highlighted the inner ear bone with a yellow marker. (p. 50)

Badger then proceeds to a stop-by-stop considerations of the hiking, biking, and birding possibilities for visitors to different parts of the Virginia coast, including the refuges and parks at False Cape, First Landing, Fisherman Island, Kiptopeke, Chincoteague, and Assateague. Some of the spots that Badger mentions may surprise the reader, as when Badger mentions the birding to be enjoyed at – of all places – the 17.6-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel that links the Eastern Shore town of Cape Charles to Virginia Beach:

What’s that, you say? An outstanding natural area made of concrete and steel and asphalt? Was that a tractor-trailer that just rumbled by? Well, okay. Here we stand in an empty parking lot, and there are tractor-trailers going by, not to mention cars, vans, pickup trucks, and the occasional motor home. We’re six miles out at sea. On our left is the Atlantic Ocean, and on our right is Chesapeake Bay. It’s the dead of winter. It’s cold out here. And there are birds all around. (p. 79)

All of which is Badger’s way of letting the reader know that “The four rock islands that anchor the two tunnels of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel are the best places in Virginia to watch seabirds” (p. 79).

A Naturalist’s Guide to the Virginia Coast takes an eminently practical approach to coastal travel and exploration, as when Badger makes these recommendations to anyone visiting the isolated coastal islands of the Nature Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve:

It takes a special mental approach to enjoy remote places such as these seaside marshes and islands. This is nature in the raw, and there are no interpretive guides, no nature trails, no park rangers. If you beach your boat on an ebbing tide, you’re probably going to have to stay there until the tide turns. If you get hungry or thirsty, you’re going to have to depend on what you brought with you. (p. 101)

My family and I often enjoy staying in Sandbridge – an isolated section of Virginia Beach that is, politically, part of Virginia’s largest city, but feels a long way from the boardwalk and the amusement-park rides and the salt-water taffy stands. The birding at Sandbridge is splendid; and the closer one gets to the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, the better the birding is. I carry my copy of the University of Virginia Press’s 2004 reprinting of A Naturalist’s Guide to the Virginia Coast with me whenever it is time for a family trip down to Sandbridge; and if you are a nature lover whose holiday travels regularly carry you over to coastal Virginia, then perhaps this book should be a part of your beach travel packing as well.

[Linda White · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential guide to the flora and fauna of the Virginia coastal region from Back Bay all the way north to Assateague Island.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book very much. It was very informative on the coast of Virginia and gave me many more places that I want to visit.