Knots and Bolts

A woodland cemetery in southern Vermont. Grave in foreground, circa 1833 reads: See travelers as you pass by/As you are now so once was I/As I am now you soon must be/ Prepare to die and…

On the back of maple syrup cans, and in public relations pamphlets designed to explain to consumers why maple syrup is so expensive, the ratio of 40 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup is…

For many, the greatest joy of spring is the return of migratory birds and the chance to observe – from a polite distance, of course – their busy rituals of courtship, nesting, and…

For years, birders have had a wide variety of multimedia educational tools to help them learn bird identification and natural history. Beginning with cassette and VHS tapes, to CDs, CD-ROMs,…

Recently I was standing on the landing of an active logging job with the landowner, who was my client. On this job, I was selling the logs to a number of buyers based on end product, as…

In August, the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) was discovered in Worcester, Massachusetts, by an astute resident. The city quickly mobilized; today, a 62-square-mile quarantine zone stretches…

What could be better than helping a child find delight in the natural world? Here are three books that can make that happen. Eggs, by Marilyn Singer, illustrations by Emma Stevenson, is an…

Wood is looking good these days when it comes to home heating. The supply is local, the price is relatively stable (at least compared to oil), and the carbon in wood does not contribute to…

Have you ever wondered what your property looks like from above? Or how it fits in with your neighbors’ properties? Topographic maps and property surveys can give you an abstract…

On a remote mountaintop in the Dominican Republic, a group of biologists crouched in the undergrowth and played pre-recorded bird calls. In the dim light came a reply: Pweer…..…

In my neighborhood, there are biennial outbreaks of plant-eating apparitions. Let me explain. “Apparition” in Greek is phasma: we see biannual outbreaks of phasmids, the leaf…

Satellite technology and geographic information systems (GIS) now allow us to accurately show how much of a landscape is paved or covered with impervious surfaces. “Paved” is just…

Human history is peppered with movements. There were the big ones: abolition, civil rights, suffrage, environmental protection. And then there were the myriad little ones, which together have…

“Stop the car and back up!” my wife, Edie, exclaimed. “I think I saw something in the pasture.” The wet pasture, by a sluggish little stream, contained numerous clumps…

Counting fishers in the rugged terrain of New York’s Adirondack Mountains is tough on scientists – and on the fishers. A new technique, which identifies fishers through prints of…

“The arrival of the emerald ash borer is seemingly imminent, and there are no known methods of control,” warns Peter Smallidge of New York’s Cooperative Extension service at…

Travel north beyond the rocky coastline of Maine, beyond Baxter State Park and the mighty Mt. Katahdin, through the industrial forests that have sustained generations of Maine loggers and…

Unless you are a fanatical birder, you may not be able to differentiate between the five species of brown thrushes found in northern New England and New York. All have wings and backs of…

“Coydog” is an established word in the North Country vernacular, but are there really half-coyote, half-domestic dog hybrids roaming our forests and fields? Wildlife biologists say…

Jewelweed has to be one of the wateriest plants in existence. If you doubt it, just hold some of it between yourself and a light source, preferably the sun. Even its thick main stems are so…