Most people would recognize a Venus flytrap or a pitcher plant, coastal species that capture insects. But what about the crystal skipper, a dainty brown butterfly found only between Fort Macon and Hammocks Beach? Or the elegant rush featherling, a late-blooming lily, known to some as “Snow in September,” in Brunswick and Pender counties?

Eric G. Bolen and James F. Parnell, biology and marine professors emeritus at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, have spent their careers studying the region that runs from the fall line around I-95 to the Atlantic. They share their knowledge in An Abundance of Curiosities: The Natural History of North Carolina’s Coastal Plain, and Parnell’s inviting photographs encourage curious readers to get outside and explore.

Belted kingfishers live in North Carolina year-round and are known for flying along rivers and shorelines, using a piercing squawk to announce their arrival. photograph by Neil Jernigan

Bolen and Parnell explore the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, which consist of six biodiverse river basins. Farther south is the miracle of North Carolina’s blackwater streams and rivers (including the Black and the Lumber), where unusual varieties of fish, invertebrates, and aquatic insects thrive, having eluded the hydroelectric impoundments that changed the course of our rivers in the west.

On the coast, we can still spot the glorious painted bunting, now in decline due to habitat loss. Meanwhile, with changing weather patterns and habitat destruction, we have gained increasingly large numbers of nesting wood storks — large, priestly birds that find fish in murky waters using the touch of their bills, not sight.

The authors make clear what treasures — soaring through the air, swimming in our waters, and roaming the land — we may lose if we are not able to protect and preserve our delicate wetlands.