"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

~ Henry Beston, from The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod, first published in 1928.

(Photo: Red knots feeding on horseshoe crab eggs, Mispillion Harbor, Delaware, May 20, 2009, Gregory Breese, USFWS)