The Outside Story

Back in 1986, the cobblestone tiger beetle (Cicindela marginipennis) had it all. In March of that year, the half-inch-long beetle was elected the Plainfield Town Insect, appeared on posters…

This spring has seemed customarily soggy. Damp spring days give the appearance that far more precipitation falls during April and May than during other times of the year. But data collected…

I heard my first whippoorwill nearly a month ago, after going my whole life without hearing one (that I was aware of). Yet I immediately recognized his unmistakable song – WHIP-oor-WILL,…

The official town beetle of Plainfield, New Hampshire, is the cobblestone tiger beetle – which is listed as a threatened species but has found a home in the town. Plainfield’s town…

West Nile Virus has been around at least since 1937, when it was first identified in the blood of a woman in the West Nile district of Uganda. Since that time, the range of the mosquito-borne…

And you thought you had trouble telling one butterfly species from another! Lepidopterists – scientists who study butterflies – have it even worse. Take the case of the tiger…

Hoping to avoid what is intolerable, we seek shelter, wrap head, wrists, and ankles, apply evil-smelling concoctions, and sometimes employ a vocabulary best left unused in company. It is…

In the world of insects, life is usually short. House flies, for instance, go from egg to adult 10 to 12 times a year. There are no insects named Methuselah, and the name given to mayflies…

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear “lead poisoning?” Paint from old houses, perhaps – especially old window frames and sashes? Or maybe, if you’re a waterfowl…

Most of us don’t think about apples until there’s a chill in the air and the leaves start to tinge. For local apple growers, though, predicting autumn’s bounty starts when the rhubarb is…

Yellowstone has its wolves. Alaska’s Chilkat Valley has its bald eagles. And the Connecticut River has its… freshwater mussels? The Connecticut River, specifically, the upper Connecticut…

If asked to draw a trout, most people would probably draw something that looked like a rainbow trout. With a bright blushy stripe along its silvery sides and dark spots from head to tail, the…

With their feet firmly planted in the soil below the water and their heads high in the air above, cattails are a vital feature of ponds, bogs, and freshwater marshes. In early April, the…

If you flat your third and seventh notes, you can play the blues. Sadness creates a blue mood. A blue pigment gives us blue jeans. Then there is the blue jay’s blue. It’s not a…

The next time you are rushing around your house looking for your car keys, you might think about the chickadees at your bird feeders. Each fall, black-capped chickadees grow new brain cells…

“If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.” Few dead horses have been beaten more thoroughly than Mark Twain’s adage – beaten so often we’ve…

In recent years, red spruce decline, sugar maple dieback, and other signs of trouble in the forest have all been attributed to acid deposition, which reaches the forest in rain, snow, fog, and…

A cavity in an old apple trunk outside my window is being visited minute-by-minute by a pair of white-breasted nuthatches. Less frequently, they are joined by their red-breasted cousins.…

Even though it’s cold outside, you may be warmed by the colorful nursery catalogs that seem to arrive in the mail almost daily. But as your eyes drift over the snow-blanketed landscape,…

Ask most people what the word “pollen” brings to mind, and you’ll probably hear “hay fever” or “allergies.” But ask a climate scientist the same question, and you’ll have…