The Outside Story

With the welcome arrival of spring, each day brings new birds, many of them from far away. Their appearance - sometimes all the members of a species arrive within a few days - is the result of…

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.…

In 1848, the bones of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) were uncovered in Mount Holly, Vermont, during excavation for the first railroad tracks across the Green Mountains. While these…

With deep snow lingering, now is a good time to perform the following experiment. Look out across a hillside that is a mix of forest and field. Now squint a bit. Which is brighter, the forest…

When snow finally arrived this winter, and high winds followed, I knew the trees would be on the move. Not just dancing in the breeze, but spreading into new territory. Many of our native…

There you are, leaning against a big maple in your sugarbush, drill and tap at the ready, when you think, “Wait a minute…is this a red maple or a sugar maple?” While maples…

My car is coated in long smears of salt. If I brush the car door, I’m left with a large, white, and somewhat tasty smudge on my clothes. While I’m always pleased to get home on winter…

In the spring of 1984, I spent many days in a study carrel on the seventh floor of Baker Library at Dartmouth College while writing Pond and Brook. One day, I walked past nearby Occom Pond…

If you take a close look at New Hampshire’s Mount Moosilauke, or the high peaks of the Franconia and Presidential Ranges, you can see gray bands of dead balsam fir trees within the green…

Nose-to-rock on the summit of Wheeler Mountain, just west of Lake Willoughby in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, I was attempting to unravel the microecology of granite ledges when I stumbled…

With trees stripped to their skeletons, winter is a good season for noticing the shapes that make hardwood silhouettes so distinctive. It’s a relief to put away the hand lens and twig guides…

Before you start reading this, grab a nickel out of your piggy bank and hold it in the palm of your hand. Golden-crowned kinglets are the smallest birds to winter in the New England woods.…

How do animals cross the road safely when traffic speeds by at 80 miles per hour? Hopefully, they don’t have to. Officials from both Vermont and New Hampshire are working to make it easier…

Anyone who grew up in a large family knows how much time is expended competing for food, space, and attention. Who is going to get the best seat at the movies, be served dinner first, or enjoy…

Right around this time of year, when the mercury decamps to the far side of zero, the car won’t start, and the trip from woodshed to woodstove starts to feel Sisyphean, a little global…

Michael Walsh remembers seeing his first Carolina wren many years ago, a sighting that would not be so noteworthy if it happened today. It’s not that the plump, brown bird has become less…

In most of the animal kingdom, it’s the same story: egg meets sperm, embryo forms, and life emerges a set number of weeks afterwards. In humans, birth happens approximately 40 weeks after…

Wouldn’t it be great to doze off at work and still get something done? If you had a bird brain, you just might be able to pull it off. Studies have shown that birds regularly keep half of…

Remnants of summer’s tall goldenrod don’t look like much in November, yet they harbor unseen lives. Globular swellings partway up the stems suggest a strange departure from the normal…

Garlic mustard is trouble. Unlike many other invasive plants, it doesn’t stop at the forest edge. It thrives in partial shade and so has no trouble growing in forest understories. It can…