Knots and Bolts

The yellow orange fly agaric (Amanita muscaria var. formosa) is common in the Northeast, especially where conifers grow. While this mushroom is often a bright red color in much of its range…

Arborist Fred Breglia has a lifelong fascination with big trees. As a child, he often heard his mother speak about a great oak tree near their home in the Catskill Mountains. When he was old…

For those of us who worry about the decline of monarch butterflies, milkweed species have special status as the butterflies’ obligate larval hosts. Early autumn – as the pods of…

During the summer, in addition to stocking five cords of firewood for the colder months, I spent time preparing for an autumn moose hunt in the forest of northern Maine. My hunting companion…

Beech bark disease, a complex ailment involving a scale insect and two species of Nectria fungi, arrived in North America more than a century ago. The disease complex kills large beech trees,…

I love a good treasure hunt. I’m not talking about a quest to find buried gold, but the dip and pull of my ponding net. I delight in each search and sort, finding gems such as green…

For wood sculptor Danielle Rose Byrd, the creative process is much like a conversation, an intuitive back-and-forth with the block of wood she will carve into a work of art. She considers the…

Young ospreys usually remain at or near their nest for at least 10 days after they can fly, and their parents continue to bring fish to them. When the young are roughly 3 months old, their…

When you see an unfamiliar bird, do you reach for a book … or your smartphone? For many of us, it’s the latter. There’s a profusion of bird-identification apps available,…

Dewy Meadows Farm in northeastern Pennsylvania has experienced many changes during the past two centuries. One constant, however, is the Dewing family, which has owned this 500-acre parcel…

Nine years ago, I set up my first wildlife camera next to an active beaver pond on a conservation property a mile from my house. On the advice of an ecologist friend, I waited three weeks to…

This March (shortly after this issue of the magazine arrives in mailboxes), the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine (PLC), a trade association, will publish its third study on the…

Burning bush (Euonymus alatus), native to East Asia, first arrived in the eastern United States in the late 1800s. It’s an attractive plant, with corky, winged green stems and opposite…

During my wanders through the woods, I’m always looking for animal tracks and other signs. The bare ground of spring provides a broad canvas for tracks, and good conditions for creating…

Robert Frost, who lived for a time just down the road from where I live now, liked to wander the backroads and wilder places and “botanize.” Although the landscape has changed a…

Celebrated in the fall for their vibrant foliage, red maple trees (Acer rubrum) produce equally vibrant reds and yellows in early spring when they are flowering. Most red maples have dense…

On the Martin Family Tree Farm in Bridgewater, New Hampshire, around the time the hardwoods begin leafing out and the bluebirds return to their nesting boxes, the frog chorus begins. On a…

Sometime between the last half of January and the first part of February, black bears give birth to between one and five (usually two) tiny, blind, almost hairless cubs. Measuring about 9…

In 1974, Cliff Allard opened Allard Lumber Company, a hardwood sawmill, on the site of his family’s former dairy farm in Brattleboro, Vermont. The outfit was a simple, four-man operation…

Tucked into the northeast corner of Connecticut, Steve and Karen Broderick’s 42-acre Town Line Tree Farm straddles the towns of Eastford and Woodstock. The Brodericks purchased this land…