The Outside Story

To wildlife biologists, the benefits of maintaining healthy riparian buffers are self-evident. But to most people, these terms are obscure. Riparian comes from the Latin riparius, meaning…

Roadside carrion is a sure sign of spring, and when I saw a raccoon shuffling along the shoulder of the interstate highway in full daylight today, I wondered about its prospects for longevity.…

And now, a few words on a topic that might have slipped your mind: your septic system. Despite the temptation to treat your septic system as “out of sight, out of mind,” you need to pay…

In 1848, workers constructing the railroad line from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vermont, found the remains of a mastodon buried 11 feet deep in a Mount Holly bog. One tusk was nearly eight feet…

Veterinarians pay attention to it. So do animal trackers. If you own a pet, you are probably paying attention, too, because you have to clean it up. Yes, I’m talking about poop, scat, feces,…

Why did the animal cross the road? The yellow sign, familiar to many, proclaims “Moose Crossing.” But, we wonder, how can anyone predict that a moose would cross at this particular spot,…

It’s a warm evening, and the only signs of snow are the eroding piles beside the driveway. Down in the valley, there is a chorus erupting, and up on the hill in a pond, another is just…

With winter breaking up and spring on its way, I spied a small pool of water glinting in the sunlight where meltwater seeps across a meadow. The pool’s surface was speckled by hordes of…

When mud season arrives, I go out at sunset wearing khakis and a brown-checked jacket. I wait in the brush of a hedgerow that trails down to a wet meadow. The sky turns salmon, then fades to…

With a small investment in feeders and seed, we can attract colorful visitors throughout the stark, white winter. But feeders can also attract a number of uninvited guests to the table. Bird…

Counting trees accurately is an essential skill for people working in the woods. Does a woodlot contain valuable timber? Are the trees growing densely or sparsely? Which tree species are…

The whir of drills and the tap of hammers will soon be resonating from sugarbushes. Clouds of roiling steam and the first waft of fresh syrup won’t be far behind. As the 2008 season kicks…

Quick – what hardiness zone are you in? If you happen to be a farmer or gardener, you’ll know the answer right off the bat, and it will probably be “four” if you live in New…

We had been looking for owls since before dawn. Mars, gleaming orange in the east, was visible as we pulled into the deep shadows of a hemlock stand. We played digital snippets of a barred owl…

Our fickle New England weather often appears in daily discourse. When boasting about having endured one meteorological extreme or another, we sometimes stretch the limits of our credibility.…

Picture Charlie Browne, executive director of the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, walking along the edge of the Connecticut River on a winter day at first light. Perhaps the snow…

Perhaps the first thing that can be said about the winter sky is that, relatively speaking, it’s pretty boring. Discounting the occasional sun dog or freak crack of lightning in the heart of…

A snowshoe hare lives down our tree-shrouded road where the track narrows between dense woods. Also known as the varying hare, the snowshoe hare is cousin to both the smaller southern…

Wood is a renewable energy resource. It’s local: so local that, for many of us, it’s available just a few steps out the back door. It’s nearly carbon neutral: trees absorb enough carbon…

In years when winter food is scarce in the boreal forests of Canada, flocks of birds migrate south and irrupt or “burst” into local fields, forests, and feeders. The winter of 2007-2008…