33 results for 'Brett Amy Thelen'

…from the past two weeks, and an article by Brett Amy Thelen, Science Director at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, New Hampshire, that ran in last September's Outside Story series.

…there’s an article by Brett Amy Thelen, Science Director at the Harris Center for Conservation Education, describing work by biologists at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania to track the movements of broad-winged hawks. As Thelen notes in her article, the Hawk Mountain biologists have affixed transmitters to a total of…

…Harris Center Science Director Brett Amy Thelen, with images from rainy spring “Big Nights,” when volunteers escort thousands of salamanders, frogs, and toads across New Hampshire roads. Also available on our site is a downloadable PDF version of the vernal pool amphibian egg guide that you’ll find on page 10.…

…Or, to riff on Brett Amy Thelen’s essay in this issue, the tangle of weather, time, temperature, and other factors that prompt spring amphibian “Big Nights.” Words can shoulder this complexity, but data-rich narrative maps and other visual displays are also powerful learning tools. Northern Woodlands is in a position…

For more than a century, biologists have utilized bird banding for studying avian migration, survivorship, longevity, and reproductive success. It’s an essential tool, but one with a significant limitation: in most instances, birds need to be recaptured in order to read the unique codes on their bands, and the chances…

…in their hands. As Brett Amy Thelen notes in this Outside Story essay, what these salamanders lack in size, “they make up for in abundance.” According to Thelen, a 1975 study at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest “found that the biomass of red-backed salamanders – just that one species – was…

…Bird-Friendly Maple Sugarbush Management with Birds in Mind by Brett Amy Thelen in the Winter 2022 issue of Northern Woodlands.

I once heard of a biologist with a clever party trick: regardless of where or when a given party was taking place, he claimed that he could produce a wild salamander in 15 minutes or less, and more often than not, he delivered. I suspect he never tried this at…

…Outside Story essay by Brett Amy Thelen, which answers the question: what happens to wildlife when all the autumn fruit ferments? Fun fact: as explained by Thelen, cedar waxwings have big livers, and “metabolize alcohol seven times faster than finches.” Alcohol inky caps start off as rather blah looking, bell-shaped…

…Outside Story essay by Brett Amy Thelen, describing these remarkable birds – listed as “endangered” in Vermont and New Hampshire, “threatened” in Canada – which are heading out now for their winter habitat in South America. They’re a joy to watch fly – incredibly acrobatic in their pursuit of prey.…

At this very moment, nestled into the sediment at the bottom of your nearest lake or pond, are Daphnia eggs – as many as 100,000 per square meter, according to one Michigan study. A genus of microscopic crustaceans, Daphnia are sometimes known as “water fleas,” and their eggs can remain…

The first time I saw nighthawks migrating through downtown Keene, I acted like a complete lunatic. Dozens of the slender birds were gliding down Main Street, some as low as the first-story marquee on Keene’s historic downtown theater. I gasped. I pointed. I stopped in my tracks. My parents, visiting…

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 National Park are so popular that park managers have had to institute a lottery system for viewing them. An entire recreation industry has…

…about the species by Brett Amy Thelen, and a profile from the Vermont Reptile & Amphibian Atlas, which includes a video showing how to move snapping turtles without harm to their spines, or your fingers. Herb-Robert is in bloom. According to The Native Plant Trust, this tiny geranium may have…

One morning in early autumn, I was running errands in downtown Keene, New Hampshire, when I was stopped in my tracks by a flash of yellow. Crouching down, I found a gorgeous, palm-sized bird, olive above, with a belly as gold as sunshine. It was a species I’d never seen…

It’s the time of year when the landscape is laid bare, the ground is impenetrable with frost, and flying insects have faded into memory. As fall slides into winter, resident songbirds like robins and waxwings must switch from their warm weather diets of earthworms and arthropods to the best of…

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 reptiles and often seek them out, I have never seen a skink. Unless you’re lucky, determined,…

Every once in a while, as I’m tramping through the winter woods on my snowshoes, it occurs to me that I am walking on top of frogs. In winter, our thoughts naturally turn to the species who remain within our sight – the chickadees at our feeders or the foxes…

Forty years ago, amid the surge of legislation that accompanied the rise of the modern environmental movement, New Hampshire passed its first Endangered Species Conservation Act. The goal was to protect wildlife facing extinction in the Granite State. There was just one problem: they had no list of exactly which…

A few times a year, I bring groups of people into the woods to search for red-backed salamanders in the damp netherworld that is the forest floor. Last spring, it was 8th graders. They did their best to follow the cardinal rule of middle school social interaction – thou shalt…