The Outside Story

Survey the insects orbiting a globe of milkweed blossoms or the delicate blooms of a chokeberry, and you might spy an apparent chimera. It looks a bit like a bee, perhaps a tad like a wasp,…

Twenty years ago, at this time of year, I found myself walking the margin of a marsh in east-central Vermont with Bob Popp, Vermont’s state botanist at that time. We had traveled to that…

A few summers ago, I was walking my dog in a pasture near my house when a butterfly landed on my bare leg. It was a medium-sized black butterfly with orange crescents along the margins of its…

Every summer I go blueberry picking and I notice the many colors of blueberries, from the luminous indigo of unpicked berries on a bush, which turn nearly black after handling, to the deep…

On a warm summer morning, you’re sitting in your yard enjoying a slow moment, when a flash of color catches your eye. Bright orange and black wings dance through the air before alighting…

One recent morning, trying to find the source of a warbler trill high in a white pine tree, I was rewarded with a brilliant flash of orange. It was my first sighting of a Blackburnian warbler,…

The river roars in the heat of the summer. The water is clear and cool, and a respite from the high sun. An angler leans back, fly-fishing rod in hand, and casts it forward. The fly drops and…

As a budding naturalist growing up in the concrete-heavy environs of Boston, I would regularly thumb through my family’s collection of nature books and daydream about the creatures…

From forest edges and thickets on late spring mornings in the Northeast comes what sounds like an exhortation from across the pond: drink-your-tea! This is not a British parent’s plea,…

On a spring morning walk, I stop to smell a painted trillium and am greeted by a goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia). Bending down for a sniff of the white and pink blooms, I am face to…

There is nothing like the royal blue of an indigo bunting. In the Northeast, they arrive fashionably late to the spring fling, behind the vanguard of migrating warblers and other songbirds. On…

One of the most exciting rites of spring is the alewife run, an annual event where throngs of fish race upstream from the ocean to inland water bodies on a reproductive journey. These…

If you’re a mosquito and it’s a warm spring afternoon, you’re out cruising the air currents on your tiny wings. But as you buzz around, the sun warming your exoskeleton, the…

The longer, warmer days of spring spark phenological changes in trees, from root to tip. As the limbs of trees stretch and twist toward the sky in search of sun, their trunks grow wider to…

As the days get longer and the sun warms the forest floor, hepatica flowers start emerging. These charming early bloomers captivated the writer and naturalist John Burroughs, who extolled…

Fractals are sometimes referred to as a “visual representation of math.” They can be observed in the spatial arrangements found in many familiar forms, patterns, and shapes in…

Muskrat mating is so sensational that songs have been written about it. Fans of 1970s pop music might be familiar with a certain ballad, written by Willis Alan Ramsey and popularized by bands…

When the winter snow melts and the spring rain begins, vernal pools appear on the landscape. These ephemeral wetlands form in depressions in forests or ridge lines and offer essential breeding…

As the frost line retreats northward in the early spring, its withdrawal is often closely followed – and occasionally preceded – by the arrival of our most common flycatcher: the…

You’re probably familiar with the basic amphibian life plan: start as a wriggly water-breathing tadpole, transform into an adult that breathes air. This is the pattern followed by all…