The Outside Story

It's one of the pleasures of fall: walking in the woods on a warm day, scuffing my feet through a deep layer of newly fallen leaves. Looking down, I notice the gold coins of aspen leaves…

Many enjoy New England’s fall foliage for its aesthetics alone, and with good reason: it’s a spectacle that draws visitors from around the world. However, the unique progression…

If you’ve seen a well-developed clinker polypore (Inonotus obliquus) protruding from a tree, there’s a good chance that you remember it. This fungus causes large, black,…

We know that squirrels make the most of fall's plenty by hoarding nuts for the winter, but the fact that birds also store, or cache, food goes largely unappreciated. Through clever…

One autumn day, 15 years ago, I found myself perched on a ladder that was leaning against a highway sign on Interstate 89 somewhere in Vermont. There was a wooden box clamped to one of the…

When asked to name the fastest animal on earth, many people will respond “cheetah.” But it is the peregrine falcon – a cliff-dwelling raptor –that holds that title…

A quiz: The first society to make paper was: A. Egypt. B. China. C. Vespidae. Answer: C. Vespidae is the family that includes paper making wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets. Social insects,…

Where I live, the three warmer seasons are colored gold. In mid-May, the fields are covered with dandelions. Then come the buttercups, which turn the landscape into a real-life Monet…

There is nothing wild about most wild rice. Most was grown in a “paddy” in California, harvested by machines, processed in factories, and finally wrapped in packages of cardboard…

Most people, when they look at a tree, look up. Understandable. The trunk lofts limbs skyward, unfurling a shimmering sunlight-gulping net of leaves. But with a little imagination (and, more…

It was a late-May afternoon in central Oklahoma and big time thunderstorms were expected to form soon. I was there as part of a 30-person tornado research team – a Vermont…

If you’ve been to camp or a business seminar recently, you may have played an icebreaker called “Two Truths and a Lie.” The rules are simple: tell two truths and one lie…

Move over emerald ash-borer and hemlock wooly adelgid. There’s a new invasive pest in town, and it may be coming to a viburnum near you. The viburnum leaf beetle, (Pyrrhalta viburni)…

If you saw a yellow-striped snake, could you tell whether it was a garter snake or a ribbon snake? To the untrained eye, the eastern ribbon snake looks like a thin gartersnake, the most…

When we bought the old farm two decades ago, the Ghost Tree came with it. He was an old sugar maple with a knothole face, tears in the trunk and branch stubs. He looks like one of the Ents,…

I remember being a kid in the backseat of my mom’s giant blue station wagon, lost in observation as the world rolled by. Growing up on the fringe of the urban world of Hartford,…

Every morning, my pool is the scene of six-legged tragedies: chunky beetles puttering around on the surface, looking for a leaf-cum-life preserver; a few flies long since deceased. Once, the…

Jim Hedbor, of Grand Isle County, Vermont, has been collecting moths for decades, but he has a distinct memory of one special night of moth hunting. He was on Cold Hollow Mountain in northern…

I’ll always remember the time I ran into a wire fence at dusk. I was taking a shortcut through some woods, and the impact sent me tumbling. Even when I looked carefully, I could barely…

At this time of year, it’s the caterpillars eating leaves in the garden or the deer flies after our blood that get most of our attention. But behind the scenes are many insects that eat…