The Outside Story

Chances are good you have malaria in your yard. It’s found throughout New England, but you won’t come down with it. This is avian malaria, and, unfortunately for birds, it is as common as…

It is a magical time we anticipate for months. The sap begins to flow in bare trees. Even in cold, with snow covering the ground, the redwings and robins and grackles return within a day or…

Legend tells us that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey as our national bird. Too bad it’s not. The bald eagle is thought to possess attributes admired by our American culture —…

Shall we go to the beach today? If you can’t afford Bermuda or sunny Florida, perhaps we can visit some former beaches closer to home. Put on your boots, and leave the flip-flops because…

A few weeks ago, I was working outside during one of winter’s warm spells. The sun shone, and the temperature was in the low 40s. From the edge of the woods, a hopeful chickadee sang out,…

Forrest Hammond slid a few feet down a hillside before he grabbed the trunk of a sapling to catch himself. With his crampons now planted rather securely in the ice, he edged down the hill…

In early March, when many cold-weary souls head south for a late winter respite, others spend their days in toasty ice-fishing shacks on still-frozen ponds and on the bays of quiet rivers.…

For many in New England, the grey days of March are among the sweetest of the year. March is when sugarmakers hike to their sugar maples, drill tap-holes into trees, hang buckets and await the…

The tracks in the snow were everywhere, penetrating into the deepest parts of the thicket, where only small animals go. Inching across frozen landscape on snowshoes, and ducking eye-level…

Like ghosts from the Arctic, snowy owls have descended on New England this winter. They’re showing up in fields, along highways and in some backyards. These migrations from the arctic…

Common goldeneyes are on the prowl. In icy waters near you, these ducks are cavorting and splashing in an odd courtship ritual. In the afterglow of Valentine’s Day, they are proof that…

Trees and shrubs can’t pull up roots and traipse around populating the countryside. They spread their seeds with help from wind, water, gravity and animals. Their seeds have parachutes,…

My father, a calm and even-tempered man, seldom used expletives. But lying awake one night, I heard him enter the darkened bathroom, where he had left a cup filled with medicinal syrup to…

More than 70 years have passed since a mountain lion was hunted and killed in New England. In 1938 a Quebec trapper caught the last one on record—in Maine. New Hampshire’s last…

Last Sunday, I gave in. I hung my head, gassed up the chainsaw, and walked into the woods. Not into deep woods, exactly, but to a spot on our hillside where a summer windstorm, hard on the…

Two winters past a pair of Carolina wrens frequented our bird feeder. The male greeted the dawn with an ebullient “tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle.” After sunset, the intrepid…

Snow: Love it if you ski, but hate it if you have a long driveway. I happen to cross-country ski and like lots of snow, and so far, two weeks into the new winter, I have few complaints. Maybe…

The other day I noticed snow fleas dusting new snow around a maple trunk. These minuscule creatures — broadly known as springtails — are out early this year, and I didn’t…

They are essentially introverts, yet they hunt and feed and breed in plain view in our own backyards. They can be ruthless predators, merciless vandals, or unwitting comediennes. Sure,…

Wild swings in the price of home heating oil and propane have caused many residents of Vermont and New Hampshire to dust off and fire up their old woodstoves. Those who have looked into buying…