The Outside Story

If you saw a yellow-striped snake, could you tell whether it was a garter snake or a ribbon snake? To the untrained eye, the eastern ribbon snake looks like a thin gartersnake, the most…

When we bought the old farm two decades ago, the Ghost Tree came with it. He was an old sugar maple with a knothole face, tears in the trunk and branch stubs. He looks like one of the Ents,…

I remember being a kid in the backseat of my mom’s giant blue station wagon, lost in observation as the world rolled by. Growing up on the fringe of the urban world of Hartford,…

Every morning, my pool is the scene of six-legged tragedies: chunky beetles puttering around on the surface, looking for a leaf-cum-life preserver; a few flies long since deceased. Once, the…

Jim Hedbor, of Grand Isle County, Vermont, has been collecting moths for decades, but he has a distinct memory of one special night of moth hunting. He was on Cold Hollow Mountain in northern…

I’ll always remember the time I ran into a wire fence at dusk. I was taking a shortcut through some woods, and the impact sent me tumbling. Even when I looked carefully, I could barely…

At this time of year, it’s the caterpillars eating leaves in the garden or the deer flies after our blood that get most of our attention. But behind the scenes are many insects that eat…

It occurred to me recently, after spotting a white-feathered American robin scampering along a dirt road, normal-colored robins alongside him, that in all my years of observing wildlife and…

Those of us who enjoy forestry and baseball get a kick out of watching professional ballplayers stride to bat holding little pieces of the northern forest in their hands, though if…

Some ground beetles are big and beautiful: shiny black or iridescent green or bluish. And because many of them are unable or reluctant to fly, they are easily caught; you can get a good long…

Route 113 at twilight. The sun’s last gasp now just a smear in the western sky. Early stars over a stripe of asphalt that’s meandering down into Chelsea. My truck upon that road.…

To the naked eye, Venus is one of the most easily identified planets. It’s the bright evening (and morning) star that you often see plopped in the sky blazing brilliantly next to the…

Many years ago, a friend and fellow naturalist encouraged me to raise cecropia moths as a way of increasing the local population, which had become scarce around my home in southern…

In Leicester, Vermont, up a rutted driveway off Route 7, Kevin New cobbled together a sugarhouse out of an old goat barn and plywood. He boiled a lot of sap this spring, long after most…

Have you noticed a few more wisps of gray of late? An ache in your joints? Crow’s feet clawing around the corners of your eyes? If so, you’re well on your way to becoming a victim…

Hikers in the mountains of the Northeast spend most of their time in the forest, emerging above the timberline for the occasional long view, then plunging back again into the greenery. The…

If you’re one of the 10 to 20 percent of the population who’s afflicted with seasonal allergies, you know that spring is in the air – literally. While the itchy eyes and…

An encounter with fairy shrimp is one of the great joys of visiting a woodland vernal pool. These small, shrimp-like crustaceans are as ephemeral as some orchids – appearing in…

Rugged overthrust ridges, deep shady valleys, mysterious caves, lush forests, buried rivers, and barren wastelands. Weird, wonderful, and sometimes sinister creatures prowl the land, lie in…

In case you missed it, there’s a natural gas explosion going on around us, not of the smoke and flames variety but rather of exploration and discovery. Enough natural gas has recently…