Knots and Bolts

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…

There you are, leaning against a big maple in your sugarbush, drill and tap at the ready, when you think, “Wait a minute…is this a red maple or a sugar maple?” While maples…

And so do the spiders, the springtails, the beetles, and the wasps. If you’ve ever been out for a walk in the woods on a balmy day in late winter or early spring, you’ve probably…

In most of the animal kingdom, it’s the same story: egg meets sperm, embryo forms, and life emerges a set number of weeks afterwards. In humans, birth happens approximately 40 weeks…

Last Halloween, biology students at U-32 High School in Montpelier, Vermont, got all decked out – not to go trick or treating – but in a search for deer ticks. They donned Tyvek…

If you want to identify yourself as someone who knows nothing about the subject, announce that you’re headed out to the woodshed to chop some firewood. Chopping firewood went out of…

In our story, “Putting Wood in Your Gas Tank,” in the Spring 2006 issue, it was stated that the part of the corn plant that was being made into ethanol is the stover – the…

“You can’t get there from here” is a classic Yankee punchline, usually delivered at the end of a joke involving an old-timer, a bewildered tourist, and a location somewhere over hill and…

When summer downpours drive you indoors, or you’re weary from a day-hiking or canoeing, you might be surprised to find that the outdoors can be found inside, on a television station near…

An oddity in the plant world is the roughly one percent of plant species that do not manufacture their own carbohydrates via photosynthesis. Instead, these plants are parasites, stealing…

Working as a consultant forester, I get to see some unusual things in the forest, but what I found last winter on a woodlot in Ludlow, Vermont, truly amazed me. This woodlot is owned by…

Tucked in the deep, hilly woods of west-central New Hampshire are several bears, and a man, who are famous by virtue of their relationship with one another. Mother Bear Man – aka Ben…

The U.S. Forest Service has finalized its latest Forest Plan for the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and Maine, and you can be excused for having missed it. Compared with the…

The six New England states and New York each have some sort of property tax system in place specifically for owners of forestland. These programs are generally referred to as “current…

Of all the land conservation projects in the Northern Forest over the past two decades, the most hopeful might be the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership, which was concluded this past summer…

Private forests, especially in the eastern U.S., are being converted to non-forest uses at an unprecedented rate, according to a new U.S. Forest Service report. The report, Forests on the…

Spreading salt to make treacherous ice magically disappear from road surfaces must have seemed brilliant in the early days of its use. Naturally occurring, abundant, and cheap, road salt…

Here’s something you already knew: home heating oil and propane prices are up roughly 50 percent from a year ago across the Northeast. More old news: same with firewood. But what your local…