꩜ The Long Return to Breizh

On names, belonging, and cultural return

How close am I to my Breizh culture, a friend once asked.

It feels like a complicated story for those of us who live far from the land that shaped us, especially when that culture has survived only in fragments, still trying to re-emerge, and the language itself is thinning, harder to reach, as if it asks for a different kind of listening.

I feel it close at heart. Not as possession, but as a pulse, something ancient that continues to move beneath distance. Yet I remain at the beginning of a return, a cultural réappropriation still taking shape.

To begin, I honor a Breton name given to me some time ago: Enora.

My civil name is Claire. Enora came later. When I asked a Breton connoisseur who I would be in Breton, his answer was immediate: Enora. The choice was not linguistic but personal. He did not choose it as a translation of my name, but because he felt it reflected my temperament, my values, my way of being. Over time, I came to understand why.

Associated with the Breton word enor, honour, and borne by a sixth-century Breton saint, Enora is a name rooted in the landscape, memory, and traditions of Breizh itself.

I like to think it points toward a way of being grounded in care rather than performance. My advocacy, science, ethics, and language are attention, not display. I try to hold meaning and naming carefully, resisting the quiet flattening through which things lose their weight and harm becomes harder to see.

In that sense, honour is not elevation. It is fidelity: fidelity to what is true, to what is owed, and to the relationships that bind us to one another, to place, and to time.

Enora is short, distinctly Breton, Brythonic rather than Gaelic, feminine without ornament. It carries a quiet austerity, as if language itself had been pared back to what cannot be taken away. A name that feels less like an inheritance than an invitation. Less like a claim than a direction.

Claire is who I am in daily life. Enora is who I am reaching toward. I hold them both, not as a contradiction but as two ends of the same thread, one given at birth, one offered as an invitation. Belonging, I'm learning, is not always something we receive. Sometimes it is something we grow into. And sometimes the journey begins with a name that asks us to become worthy of it.

A Racer Bolting Through the Leaves 𓆙

Today I encountered my first Northern Black Racer (Coluber constrictor) in the Beech Forest in Provincetown, a human-wildlife disturbance event from the snake’s perspective, no doubt. I decided she was a she because that was how she felt to me, though I know there is no easy way to tell in the field. She produced a short, dry rattling sound, likely from tail vibration in the leaf litter, just long enough for me to localize and identify her before she bolted. Because she did bolt, and this caught me by surprise, I even jumped back a little, despite already keeping a good distance from her. She seemed to rely on speed rather than crypsis or any prolonged defensive display. She half-flew and slithered. Her escape response was immediate, powerful, and intimidating.

Witnessing that acceleration and directional control was a privilege and hinted at how well adapted racers are for active, diurnal foraging in open or semi-open habitats. In a beech forest, where fallen leaves and shifting light can offer some concealment, that kind of movement still seemed to matter most: quick reaction, alertness, and the ability to turn a sudden disturbance into distance.

📷 North American Racer · Couleuvre Agile (Coluber constrictor) | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly. 

🕸️ A Star in the Salt Marsh: The Orbweaver of Hatches Harbor

Walking back along the Hatches Harbor main trail, I wasn’t looking for a spider. I was mostly looking for a way out of the heat. At this stretch, the path runs between salt marsh and tidal flats, harshly lit, the kind of midday glare that flattens everything into high-contrast shapes. I let my eyes do what they usually do in the field, scanning for what might be out of place, for the small break in pattern that says something living is tucked into the scene.

That was when I noticed the blotch.

Halfway up a great mullein stalk, a darker, spiky knot interrupted the clean, pale stem. I first mistook it for an unopened spotted knapweed flower head, something plant-like enough to pass by. Only then did it resolve into a remarkable little spider, a starbellied orbweaver, clinging to the stalk and nearly merged with the mullein’s woolly surface. From a distance it read as plant. Up close, it became pattern.

The starbellied orbweaver (Acanthepeira stellata) is a spiny-abdomen orbweaving spider found across much of North America. It favors open, sunny habitats, where it spins vertical webs at night to intercept flying insects. Its camouflage is especially effective against stems and dried vegetation, making it well suited to exposed coastal landscapes. Like other orbweavers, it builds the familiar wheel-shaped web, though in the glare and heat of the trail hers was difficult to see and may have been partly damaged. She seemed almost part of the mullein, a small, still shape holding fast in full sun.

At first I saw only her body and the plant. She was alert yet relaxed. No obvious web cut the space around her. The air beside the stem looked empty, full of heat shimmer and insect flight but not silk. Only after I stood quietly for a while did the rest of her story emerge: a faint suggestion of threads lower down the stalk, near the leaves, where the plant’s architecture thickened. There, the web was less a perfect wheel than a blur of lines tucked into the cooler, more textured part of the plant.

The spider had chosen the blotch position, above the main web, exactly where my brain would almost, but not quite, file her away as part of the plant. What broke the illusion was the thing I rely on most in the field: the sense that the symmetry is just a little off, that one small patch of color or shape doesn’t quite belong.

I do not see this species often. In fact, this was only my second sighting, and strangely enough, the first was exactly one year earlier to the day, on the same trail! Some places seem to keep their own calendars.

📷 Starbellied Orbweaver (Acanthepeira stellata) | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly. 

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Aside: why “broken symmetry” works

When you walk through a habitat, most of what you see is repeating structure: stems rising at similar angles, leaves arranged in familiar patterns, stones with consistent colors and textures. Your visual system is excellent at compressing all that into “background” so your brain doesn’t have to process every leaf individually.

Insects and spiders often survive by disguising themselves as part of that background, mimicking thorns, bark, dead leaves, or seeds, but the mimicry is almost never perfect. There’s usually some small mismatch in color, outline, texture, or orientation: a triangle where everything else is linear, a matte patch on something glossy, a curve where the plant world is mostly straight. When you train yourself to look for those tiny disagreements, you start to pull animals out of camouflage that most people walk straight past.

A simple practice: on your next walk, consciously soften your gaze and scan for “the one thing that doesn’t quite fit,” a strangely shaped knot on a twig, an extra bump on a stem, a shadow that seems too crisp. Pause and give that oddity a few extra seconds of attention. Even if nine times out of ten it’s just plant tissue or debris, the tenth time it resolves into a spider, a leafhopper, or a tucked-in moth, and your pattern-spotting gets better with every success.

On Speaking to a Room I Cannot See

Recently, I gave a virtual talk where the participants were not visible at all: no faces, no names, just my host and me, and a counter at the bottom of the screen. The experience crystallized something I have felt for a while: I am not at home in this format.

Webinars are often designed for scale and control. Everyone is muted, some formats now impose that cameras are off, and interaction is funneled into narrow channels, usually a chat box or Q&A window (as was the case here, and it caught me by surprise). From a host’s perspective, this can make sense in some situations. It prevents interruptions, protects privacy, and keeps the program running on time. But for a speaker whose core values are exchange and conversation (which was the stated objective of this talk), it removes the very cues that make communication feel alive. Without that basic human visibility, it is impossible to read the room, adjust to people’s needs, or feel that the exchange is mutual rather than transactional.

Seeing people is not a luxury; it is part of what makes communication respectful. People’s choice to keep their video off is entirely their own, and I respect that. What matters to me is that participants are at least given the option to be visible, rather than being structurally kept invisible by the format. Equally, when it is possible, I need to be able to see some of the audience. An organization’s decision about format (as in this case, my host’s organization rather than the host herself) should not make both speakers and attendees hostage to enforced invisibility.

When an event chooses a setup that hides the audience while asking the speaker to show up fully, it creates an imbalance. The speaker’s presence is exposed and accountable, while the audience’s presence is abstract and anonymous. That design choice says something about whose experience is being prioritized and whose experience is being dismissed.

Going forward, I am going to be more deliberate. Before accepting an online speaking invitation, I will ask how the event is structured. If it is a strict webinar, I may request a meeting format, or at least some way to see and hear participants during part of the session. And if that is not possible, I may choose to decline.

I do not mind technology; it is part of my background. But I mind how respectfully we use it. I mind being asked to show up fully for people who are structurally kept invisible. Respect in communication includes the simple courtesy of letting us see each other. This is not about rejecting technology. It is about insisting that, even online, we treat knowledge-sharing as a relationship rather than a broadcast.

Lives Interlaced on a Black Cherry Leaf 🐜

I had set out with a simple plan: check a bog and maybe catch sight of pitcher plants. These days, it is never a given, as many bogs are quietly drying. When I couldn’t find a place to park, I turned back, stopped the car, looked at a trail map, noticed a cluster of nearby paths, and thought, ‘I haven’t been there’, and decided to see what it holds.

That small shift led me into a mixed pitch pine, black oak, and scrub oak maritime forest. The trail opened toward an overlook of kettle ponds and parabolic dunes, their forms shaped by a steady wind moving in one direction. Simply lovely.

As usual, covering less than a mile took me a long while. Color, texture, and form in the vegetation kept asking for attention.

With pitcher plants out of the picture in this habitat, I returned to my other thread of inquiry this week: following the movements of carpenter ants and their relatives along vegetation. A black cherry caught my eye, though not at first for itself. What revealed it were the black cherry leaf gall mites (Eriophyes cerasicrumena). Lately, it is often the tracks that introduce me to the host. Tracks have become my first keys. I have grown to appreciate this way of seeing. It echoes what I often share on walks: interactions are what make worlds. What an organism is in isolation is less than what it is within its community.

I lingered on the leaves, watching the galls shift in color from cream to a deep dusty rose. Ants moved deliberately among them. When I gently touched the twig holding those inhabited leaves, the ants responded immediately, quick and purposeful in their defense.

Looking more closely, I realized that the deeper pink or mauve forms I had been noticing were not galls at all, but caterpillars.

Using a twig to keep a respectful distance, I parted the leaves slightly. The caterpillars appeared to be feeding on the gall tissue, perhaps on the tiny inhabitants of those galls. In return, I assume the caterpillars offer the ants a sugary secretion, which would keep the ants nearby and give the caterpillars a kind of protection. The black cherry provides the site and food altered by the gall mites, the mites create the nutrient-rich structures, the caterpillars exploit those structures and their occupants, and the ants patrol and defend the spot in exchange for the sweet reward. Four species, tree, mites, caterpillars, and ants, together form a small living economy of shelter, food, and defense.

Yet as I watched, another question emerged: what is the black cherry getting from all of this?

I have since logged the observations and am waiting for confirmation. Whether or not the identification holds, the moment stands on its own. It was a reminder that attention shapes what we find. Plans may guide us to a place, but it is the openness of mind and senses that reveals what is already there.

📷 Cherry Gall Azure · Azur des Phytoptes du Cerisier (Celastrina serotina) | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly. 

🌸 A Hole in the Flower

While surveying late spring wildflowers recently, I paused to admire a flowering rock harlequin. At first glance, the bloom appeared unremarkable. But a closer look revealed something unexpected: a perfectly round opening near the base of one of its nectar spurs.

The flower itself was intact. The petals were fresh, the spur undamaged except for this small circular hole, as though someone had carefully punched a tiny doorway through the side.

Who made it?

The question is not easy to answer. A flower can tell a story, but it does not always reveal all of its characters.

Some insects obtain nectar by entering a flower through its natural opening and, in the process, may transfer pollen between plants. Others bypass the usual route and access nectar through openings in the side of a flower. Sometimes these openings are created by insects themselves. Sometimes they may already exist. Distinguishing among these possibilities often requires repeated observation and a bit of detective work.

What fascinated me most was not solving the mystery immediately, but noticing it in the first place.

Moments like these remind us that ecology is not only about collecting data. It is also about cultivating attention. A tiny hole in a flower can open a window onto questions of plant anatomy, insect behavior, species interactions, and the countless ecological relationships unfolding around us every day.

Many of the observations collected through EwA's field studies begin this way: with curiosity. A detail catches our attention. We ask questions. We return. We observe again. Over time, individual observations accumulate into a richer understanding of the living systems we share.

Nature rarely reveals all of its stories at once. Sometimes it offers only a clue and invites us to look closer.

📷 A rock harlequin flower displaying a small circular opening near the base of its nectar spur. Observations like this often spark new questions about species interactions and ecological relationships. Observed on June 1st, 2026 and recorded here | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly.

≽༏≼ A Lady Eastern Pondhawk at Close Range

She seemed determined to land on my hand. Every time I moved it, she followed, so eventually I gave in and waited patiently until she decided she was done with me. It took a while!

The Importance of Place

Female Eastern Pondhawks seem to pick up on the territory first. A floating mat of plants matters because that’s where a male is set up, and where mating and egg-laying can actually happen. So in a way, the female is choosing a defended patch with a male already holding it, not just picking a mate out in the open.

What seems to matter most is the quality of the site, how well the male holds it, and whether the patch is worth guarding. A good little raft of vegetation probably means both a solid male and a good place for eggs.

In short, the floating plant mat is doing more than just floating there. It’s part of the whole mating setup.

📷 Eastern Pondhawk · Érythème des Étangs (Erythemis simplicicollis) | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly.