The Outside Story

Nearly a billion monarch butterflies from the eastern United States and Canada migrate to the mountains of Mexico each year, and this year’s migration is already underway. This has long been…

With autumn rapidly approaching, we in hilly New England are fortunate to witness spectacular displays of fall colors as the deciduous trees lose their leaves for the winter. This remarkable…

Some have teeth, some a sticky, entrapping liquid. Others have one-way tunnels leading to pools of digestive juices and are said to exude a paralyzing perfume. All of which are good reasons…

An oddity in the plant world is the roughly one percent of plant species that do not manufacture their own carbohydrates via photosynthesis. Instead, these plants are parasites, stealing…

To see a stream’s smallest inhabitants, lie on a flat rock and duck your head underwater. A mask and snorkel help. You’ll be assailed by the effervescence of rushing water, the sibilance…

Some of the best views in Vermont and New Hampshire are found at the top of fire towers. But with most of the states’ towers long since taken down, and with those few still remaining now…

Vermont and New Hampshire are great places to live, if for no other reason than the wildlife. At any given moment, you might glance out the window upon a profusion of lively flowers jostled by…

Years ago, I learned that the large, bulbous, metallic-blue beetles that are often found on the lawn are called blister beetles. When molested, they exude a clear, orange liquid from their…

Our farmhouse looked a lot like other northern New England farmhouses when we first moved in: short on landscaping but long on charm. Green grass grew right up to the old stone foundation.…

Lighthouse-keepers were the first to notice. Even in the days before electric lights, lighthouse-keepers who tended flaming lamps atop tall towers noticed that, on some nights, birds would…

A chipmunk’s is the only life I have ever saved using CPR. The animal had become tangled in some netting around a garden at a summer camp where I was working, twisted the mesh into a noose,…

Usnea, pronounced ooze-nee-ah and better known as old man’s beard, is the long, lacy, greenish lichen that grows from tree trunks and branches in forests across New Hampshire and Vermont. It…

You’ve no doubt heard the sad tale of Vermont and New Hampshire agriculture by now. Farming washed over our states like a tidal wave in the late eighteenth century, covering more than three…

Warblers can be hard to find. First of all, they are small. Slip three in an envelope, and a single 39-cent stamp would be sufficient to cover the postage. And they are binocular-shy,…

The next time you are driving through Moose Alley on U.S. Route 3 in Pittsburg, New Hampshire, or watching a moose wallow in a Green Mountain marsh, you can thank the beaver for helping make…

Most people know that tree species vary in their ability to tolerate shade, with shade-tolerant species often found growing in the dim light underneath the shade-intolerant canopy trees they…

Primal, elemental, and evocative of the wild recesses of the human spirit, the “common” loon is among our most beloved birds. Its rapacious ancestors swam with dinosaurs and snared…

What is diatomaceous earth, you ask? Quite simply, it is the naturally occurring remains of Bacillariophyceae algae, unicellular organisms that have been abundant in the world’s oceans,…

If warblers have nightmares, they are probably about their cousin, the loggerhead shrike (Lanius ludovicianus). An elegant little bird, the shrike’s appearance is not what makes it so…

I’ll make one prediction about this coming summer: the floor of the dry storage above our garage will become covered in bat guano. How do the culprits of this mess – likely little…