Outside Story - Archive
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Bats Take It on the Nose
July 07, 2008
Ryan Smith, a wildlife technician with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, stood with his back to the mouth of the Mount Aeolus bat cave in Dorset, Vermont, in early April. Behind him, icicles rose from the ground like stalagmites. He wore a white Tyvek biohazard suit with the hood up. The respirator with hot-pink filter caps blocked the smell …
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Un-Damming Our Rivers
June 30, 2008
In both New Hampshire and Vermont, landowners and state officials are discussing the benefits of removing old dams and restoring rivers to their historical banks. Many of these dams are small, though some, like Hinsdale’s McGoldrick Dam, which was removed from the New Hampshire’s Ashuelot River in 2001, straddle major rivers.
There are consequences to setting a river …
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In Defense of Slugs
June 23, 2008
My thoughts turn to gardens, the earthy fragrance of moist woodland – and to slugs tucked under a rock. Few things disturb gardeners so much as slugs and the silvery ribbons of slime they leave behind as evidence of their peripatetic travels.
No one minds an ordinary snail, it seems, but coming across a slug is …
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Don’t Put Wild Bird Eggs All In One Basket
June 16, 2008
How much can a bird’s egg tell us about the bird that laid it and how it lives? As it turns out, it can tell us a lot about the generalities, but little about the details.
For example, what does the color of a bird’s egg tell us? Many scientists believe that the default color of birds’ eggs …
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Breathing New Life into Old Fields
June 09, 2008
Old fields pulse with activity. Butterflies flutter, crickets call, meadow voles scurry, and black-and-yellow garden spiders ambush from dew-spangled webs. Early June footsteps release the floral sweetness of wild strawberries.
Fields that are no longer being hayed or pastured regularly become populated with a tangle of plants and, eventually, the beginnings of a forest. Because they are such …
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Ash Trees in Trouble
June 02, 2008
“Going, going, gone! Big Papi does it again with a walk-off home run for the Red Sox!”
How many times have Sox fans heard this call after that tell-tale crack of bat on ball? Until recently, the wooden bat that struck that ball would have been made of ash from the Northeast. (Some players now use maple, too.) …
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Flies Are Your Friends
May 26, 2008
The poet Ogden Nash put it succinctly: “God in His wisdom / Made the fly /
And then forgot / To tell us why.”
True, it’s blackfly season, which is perhaps not the best time of year to convince you that some flies are our friends. But not all flies deserve the disgust we heap on …
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Doubly Ephemeral Flowers
May 19, 2008
The fleeting interval between late-April and mid-May, after the snow has melted yet before the
canopy of leaves overhead is fully deployed, is when many of our native woodland flowers, such
as trillium and trout lily, find their brief moment in the sun. These flowers are often referred
called “spring ephemerals” since, after the …
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Horsetails and Scouring Rushes
May 12, 2008
Horsetails and scouring rushes are among the commonest plants around, especially noticeable early in spring when the evergreen species among this group stand out against an otherwise mostly brown background. All summer, too, you can find these primitive plants in road ditches, pond and stream edges, wet meadows, and damp woods.
Yet they seem to be widely ignored. …
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Dandelion Whine
May 05, 2008
Here are some ways to get rid of dandelions: spraying 2,4-D (an herbicide, banned in several countries for its health risks, but not in the U.S.); pulling up by hand; mowing the flowers before they set seed; and pulling them up with any of a dozen devices sold in garden stores designed to make the task easier.
Here …
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