The Outside Story

I have a confession to make. Up until a week or so ago, I didn’t know how to tell a grasshopper from a cricket. I’d see some sort of large, hopping insect, reach for my field…

Stick your tongue out and say “ahhh.” If you were a woodpecker, your tongue would extend out of your mouth by about two feet! Bird tongues display an amazing array of adaptations. I first…

I am often asked what causes certain species to be abundant one year and scarce the next. “Why aren’t there any blue jays at my feeder this year?” “How come there were so many…

In the world of sporting literature, the ruffed grouse holds a position of respect that borders on awe. It is well known for its wariness, the explosiveness of its flush, and its capacity…

The Laurentide ice sheet that covered New England for millennia began receding about 18,000 years ago. As Earth’s climate warmed, ice melted faster than it was created. The southeastern…

Which Vermont mammal is so secretive that a woodsman may go a lifetime without seeing one? The lovely little flying squirrel. Our most nocturnal mammal, almost entirely arboreal, it sleeps in…

High atop Mt. Mansfield, with the sun barely breaking the eastern horizon, I hold a small songbird called a Bicknell’s thrush in the palm of my hand. I carefully push back the feathers…

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…