The Outside Story

Rat-a-tat-tat. Showers of acorns hit the ground and tapped our heads as my husband and I hiked the Appalachian Trail. Thousands of acorns strewn across the path atop multi-colored leaves made…

I can’t seem to pass a hollow tree without stopping to snoop. If there is a cavity within reach, an investigation is in order. Wear and tear around a hole, evidence of food items on the…

Bent down in an apple field searching for a lost earring, I found a different treasure: a stout mouse-like animal, with a short tail and stubby ears. It gave me one quick look, then…

For nearly a decade, I’ve been adding to a brush pile in the woods behind my home. A depository of pruned branches, dead flowers, discarded logs, old leaves, and an occasional Christmas…

Pine barrens are certainly piney – but they’re not the least bit barren. They were so named not because they lack life, but because colonists found them unsuitable for raising…

A walk in the woods during fall is likely to reveal an array of forest fungi. Ranging from delicate, tan mini-umbrellas to fleshy, white softballs to foot-long, orange-yellow shelves growing…

Last October, a young student in one of my nature journaling workshops pointed out a fuzzy yellow caterpillar with long black tufts. “Those kind sting!” he declared. He was the…

As I waded in Lake Champlain one summer, a fellow bather explained that just a little farther out, refreshing spring water would cool my feet. I have heard that old wives’ tale repeated…

Sitting in a grassy field at Townshend State Park on a late summer day, I watched dozens of dragonflies roaming the sky. Their slender bodies drifted in and out of view as they rode the air…

New England is home to dozens of species of mammals, hundreds of varieties of birds, and tens of thousands of different insects, but only one lizard: the five-lined skink. Though I am fond of…

Plenty of backyard birdwatchers consider blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) the villains of the avian world. Mark Twain best summarized anti-blue jay sentiment when he compared the bird’s…

The September before my daughter was born, my husband and I went for our last pre-baby hike around Camel’s Hump. We stopped for a snack on the ridgeline, and as we sat munching granola…

Some of my favorite children’s books describe life cycles as heroic tales of persistence and redemption. From The Ugly Duckling to The Very Hungry Caterpillar to A Seed is Sleeping,…

One summer day I lifted the black plastic top of our composter and jumped back, startled – a large snake was curled up on top of the compost. The yellow stripe down the center of its…

The living light of bioluminescent organisms like fireflies, anglerfish, and marine plankton is legendary. The dazzling light shows put on by synchronous fireflies in Great Smoky Mountains…

Last July, Rich Kelley posted a most unusual photograph to the Vermont Birding Facebook group with the caption, “Someone bit off more than he could chew.” The photo, taken in the…

Recently I saw a beautiful orange butterfly speckled with black – a great spangled fritillary – feeding on orange hawkweed in a meadow. I observed it through binoculars, so as not…

I first became acquainted with my neighborhood red-bellied woodpecker (​Melanerpes carolinus) when it visited my bird feeders last winter. Sporting a black-and-white-striped back with a…

There was a sucking sound as my rubber boot sank into the deep black muck. Naturalist Jon Binhammer and I were standing in the middle of a hardwood swamp in central Vermont. Above us, dainty…

As you swat away blackflies this summer, look closely; it may be that not all those flies are flies. Some of them might be tiny sweat bees, members of the Halictidae family, which gets its…