The Outside Story

When I hug my son after a day of fall bouldering, his hair smells of the sun-warmed rock we’ve been climbing over. It’s a distinctive odor, evocative of gray ledges and golden…

In cartoons, when a turtle is spooked, it retreats into and closes up its shell. While used for comic effect, this imagery is based in fact – although not all turtles are capable of this…

Tis the season for spooky stories, and just in time for Halloween, the spider that news headlines have described as “giant,” “flying,” and “venomous” has…

Wandering through the woods this time of year, occasionally I’ve come across a small deciduous tree laden with cone-like structures that resemble the hops used to brew beer. This is the…

The great annual movements of fall include monarch butterflies winging toward Mexico, whales heading to the Caribbean to give birth, and multitudes of birds in the autumn skies. There’s…

On warm days through early fall, you can find two large species of “digger” wasps flitting about late-blooming flowers. Like many wasps, these species elicit strong, often negative…

The Northeast is famous for its fall foliage, as the lush, green leaves of summer transform into bright hues, turning hillsides and valleys into quilts of scarlet, ochre, and gold. Among the…

As the height-of-summer floral abundance fades, goldenrods and asters fill the landscape with hits of yellow, purple, pink, and white. Beyond the beauty they provide, these late bloomers are a…

I often spot black willow trees as I’m kayaking along a riverbank or lakeshore. While perhaps less picturesque than its (non-native) cousin the weeping willow, black willow is native to…

Before the trees put on their colorful autumnal cloaks, the newly rewilded fields at my home turn to gold and purple. New England American-aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) begins blooming…

Birds exist in a fluid and unpredictable world. Survival depends on remaining constantly alert, adapting and responding to encounters with predators and environmental conditions that change…

Water striders are a common sight on ponds, vernal pools, and puddles. During clear summer days, these insects seem to walk on water, a feat they accomplish through a combination of long legs…

Ferns have grown on Earth for longer than trees and flowers, and existed well before Homo sapiens. In our region, the oldest lineage, emerging 200 million years ago, is the royal fern family…

If you wanted to see the Sunapee trout, you might be inclined to search in its namesake, New Hampshire’s Lake Sunapee. But this elusive fish has long been extirpated from the Granite…

Walking on a woods road beside a stream in early July, I spotted several tight clusters of butterflies perched on scat piles and on wet sand near the brook. When one of the butterflies spread…

Behind my garden of native plants, one scrappy perennial holds its own among the tangle of goldenrod stalks and blackberry brambles. Its swaying flowerheads buzz with a throng of insects:…

A long time ago, not so far away, freshwater plants partnered with fungi and moved onto land from lake and river shores. Since that time, land plants have evolved many sophisticated strategies…

If you’re looking for warblers on a walk in the summer woods, your first instinct might be to look toward the canopy. But two closely related warbler species forgo those elevated…

Road crews across the United States use more than 24 million tons of road salt (sodium chloride) to melt ice and snow each year – triple the volume used in 1975. Road salt is…

Black birds with a greenish sheen and brown heads sometimes visit my yard during spring migration. These are male brown-headed cowbirds, and they often arrive in mixed flocks of red-winged…