The Outside Story

There is a crop that most of us spend many hours on in the summer. We don’t eat it, sell it, or put it in vases, but most of us couldn’t image living without it. It is grass!…

Crows are a lot like us. Not only do they like to live in the same places we do but also they live as we do. “There is probably no organism on Earth that has a more similar social system…

Do ancient fish swim through your dreams? I cupped a frog in my hand and looked closely at a colorless little fleck in the middle of its head between two protruding eyes – the brow spot.…

Anyone who has ever mismanaged a pile of firewood has probably seen spalted wood: wood in a relatively early stage of decomposition that is irregularly bleached and vividly marked with thin,…

Despite the late spring this year, the wine-colored spikes of peony flowers have now pushed their way back into the aboveground world. These spikes will soon be covered with swelling green…

Victoria Weber of Bethel, Vermont, would like to add a season to our calendar. It would start after mud season and end before summer; in other words, from April to mid-June. She calls it…

Even if we shun the leggy creatures that make them, we marvel at the geometric precision and dew-frosted beauty of spider webs. There is nothing so elegant, so versatile, and so perfectly…

As a kid, I loved riding my bike endlessly around our Connecticut driveway, looping under an almost mythically giant maple. But one spring, my joyrides were tainted by hundreds of caterpillars…

Since the 1960s, the overall number of birds in at least one of our local forests has been declining. Not the number of species, but the total number of birds. This observation comes from…

The turtle was lying on the white line marking the road edge as I pulled my car over to move it. It was a small painted turtle, and its shell had a deep crack across it. She was taking her…

I was transported back to 1977 the other day, when I flipped to the peregrine falcon page in an old field guide. I saw that the bird’s range at that time was funneled down from widespread in…

By early June, when the growing season seems to be just getting up to speed, some of our most beautiful woodland wildflowers will have already come and gone. To find any sign of trout lily,…

Sea lamprey have been called the least-understood fish of the Connecticut River. Their very appearance can be startling: long, skinny, and eel-like, with a round mouth and no obvious gills.…

Soon after moving to Vermont 25 years ago, I began to hear a common lament, delivered with a slow shake of the head and a sigh of Yankee resignation. “There’s no springtime here.…

The first Easter bunnies around here were probably New England cottontails, a unique species found only in New England. They look so much like the more widespread eastern cottontail that…

In every season, there is something red about red maple. Its beautiful flowers, most often red but occasionally yellow, are among the earliest glories of spring. Even the unfurling leaves are…

In the realm of nature, mysteries often unfold beyond the limits of our perception. Not so with spring peepers. Stand at the edge of any wetland when peepers have reached full voice, and you…

What are we to make of the Connecticut River mudpuppies? And what is a mudpuppy, anyway? It is not a dirty dog. It’s not a canine of any sort. It is a salamander, and a big, ugly salamander…

In one form or another – eggs, larvae, pupae, nymphs, adults – insects are as much with us when it’s below zero as they are in July. Some, tucked away, become inactive before the…

In one form or another – eggs, larvae, pupae, nymphs, adults – insects are as much with us when it’s below zero as they are in July. Some, tucked away, become inactive…