The Outside Story

Hibernation is a concept that everyone thinks they know. Woodchucks hibernate, chickadees don’t. Woodchucks cool down and go to sleep in winter. Chickadees don’t. So cooling down…

The water level in any river ebbs and flows depending on how much precipitation falls, and the inhabitants of the river readily adapt to these changes. But what happens to aquatic species when…

You might not know it, but common goldeneyes are on the prowl. They’re out in icy waters, cavorting and splashing about in a quirky duck-dating ritual. The male, like a randy college…

On occasion I’ve asked friends what they knew about shrews, and almost without exception the question simply puzzled them. Not only had they never seen any such creature, they…

Natives of Central and South America, opossums are not particularly well equipped for life in northern New England, and yet they have been found here in increasing numbers since about 1900.…

One recent winter morning, when I awoke at dawn and glanced out our bedroom window, a nervous coyote slipped from the woods – crouching, tail tight between its hind legs like a naughty…

There it was, a faint orange glow in the northern sky. Could it be, at long last, the northern lights? I stared at the glow while the cold night air nipped at my cheeks. The light seemed…

It was a busy summer in the pond at the foot of my hill. Hundreds of wood frogs mated there. I watched their eggs hatch, watched as tadpoles grew up, got legs, lost tails, and headed for the…

Snip, drip. Jane Moscowitch snipped a shoulder-high phragmites down to knee height. She crouched and dripped a few drops of purple-dyed herbicide into its hollow stem. “Funny,” she said,…

Lake Fairlee, just in from the Connecticut River on the Vermont side, looks like a giant tadpole, its tail swung north to meet Blood Brook, its head southwest, feeding the unnamed fork of the…

We live surrounded by deer. They observe us as we cut wood, walk in the woods, or step out back to hang the laundry. They turn up at the edges of fields, deep in the woods, or in the rough…

I can’t stop thinking about butter sauce. I guess that’s no surprise. When we think about crayfish, if we think about them at all, it is often as either a New Orleans-style feast…

In late November, after its leaves have changed to a beautiful golden yellow and fallen to the ground, and sometimes even after they have turned sodden from cold rains and no longer crunch…

In Vermont and New Hampshire, most grasslands are pastures and meadows – ephemeral plant communities that depend on people to survive. Without mowers or livestock, they would slowly…

Remember the old adage, “snow is poor man’s fertilizer?” It turns out to be true. Snow and rain, sleet and hail, and just the dust settling out of cooling air carry trace…

As we move into the fall season, many familiar autumn insects are likely to catch our eye. Out-of-work yellow jackets are on the prowl. The glistening webs of the showy black-and-yellow…

Autumn color comes to the foliage of Vermont and New Hampshire in early September, crescendos in mid-October, and fades by November. What causes this display of color? And why is New…

Just as we’ve always suspected, mice do work in shifts. How else could they get so much done? The two most common species of native mice in our region, deer mice and white-footed mice, are…

Nitrogen is both friend and foe. It is essential to the growth of plants and other organisms; that’s why so many people apply nitrogen to their gardens. Before the advent of synthetic…

A “swarm migration” of dragonflies is impossible to ignore – if you’re lucky enough to see one. In a swarm migration, thousands or millions of these swift and colorful insects fly…