The Outside Story

With patches of snow on the ground and wood smoke drifting in the air, late-autumn changes are everywhere. Many species of birds have left for southern warmth; weasels and hares have put on…

Creators of fabulously rich wildlife habitats or nuisance animals that cause flooding and property damage? It all depends on how you perceive the beaver, North America’s largest rodent.…

From hickory nuts and beechnuts to hazelnuts and acorns, nut-bearing trees and shrubs produced a bounty this year. Local wild nuts are free and healthy to eat. Plus, they don’t require…

They soar and glide with the grace of our most elegant birds. They are content exploring the high seas for fish or picking through dumpsters for fast-food leftovers. They are approachable and…

On many mornings I share my shower with a long-legged friend. In fact my friend has eight very long legs and the same number of eyes. She usually hangs upside-down in a loose web above the…

Around this time of year drivers are more apt to notice dead deer along the sides of highways. You may have heard that hunting is the cause – that hunters scare deer from the woods and…

Evolution among tree and bug species is something of a cat-and-mouse spy game: One side discovers a strategy that earns it the upper hand, at least temporarily, then the other side counters…

For the past six months they flickered among us—tiny flashes of red, orange, yellow and blue floating above hayfields and dancing in flower gardens: spring azures, great spangled…

It’s easy to assume plants just sit there and do little, while animals run around busying themselves. Not the case: Plants often are on the move, or at least their seeds are. A plant…

On a remote mountaintop in the Dominican Republic just before Christmas, a group of Vermont biologists crouched in the undergrowth and played recorded bird calls hoping for an early holiday…

Once the world discovers you know something about nature, the questions never end. Odd phone calls come from people you’ve never met asking about the identity of this or that plant or animal…

Bim … bim … bam. This late-summer sound announces that our oak tree produced acorns this year and is dropping them onto the metal roof of our shed. Along our road in Thetford, Vermont, and…

Didymo in a river looks like many gross things: trailing wisps of toilet paper, goopy brown blobs, a coating of slime. It’s commonly referred to as “rock snot” and for good reason. If…

A woolly bear hunches along a rock wall, stops, raises its head and starts off in a new direction. Now that it’s late summer, this rusty-brown and black larva of the Isabella tiger moth is…

Dragonflies are nature’s aeronautical marvels. Whether darting over water at 35 miles per hour or hovering in midair, they are a spectacle of colors in motion—from a delicate blue-green…

Butternut country is so distinctive that Parker Nichols knows he has arrived even before he sees the first butternut tree. As the proprietor of Vermont WildWoods, a flooring and millwork…

The apple blossoms this past spring were the first hint of an unusual season – they were abundant and lovely. The crab nearest our house set fruit for the first time in a decade. Then I…

The yellow warbler is a tiny explosion of color, music and tenacity. Every spring these songbirds arrive from the tropics to our alder swamps, willow stands and wet thickets. The male glows…

An earwig still evokes a shudder after many centuries, for the insect’s Old English name, earwicga (”ear” and “worm”), suggests it might crawl into your ear when you are asleep and…

In the 1958 film, “The Blob,” a huge amoeba-like creature from outer space engulfs and kills several people in a small Pennsylvania town before it is eventually destroyed by a local…