While I was searching the drawers of the Saint Michael’s College insect collection, a spectacular little beetle caught my eye. The pearlescent elytra, or wing coverings, were marked with the…

On a winter day, I drove down to a nearby wetland bisected by a town road and walked carefully onto the ice. I was looking for cattail heads to dissect so I could meet the caterpillars who overwinter…

In the late 1990s, when my wife and I moved to New England from the sparse desert and jagged peaks of the Southwest, it took some time to adjust to the dense, green landscape of northern hardwood…

Earlier this winter, I took to the pond ice – not to skate, but to peek below the surface. Although lake ecologists once considered the plankton in frozen lakes to be dormant during winter,…

This issue features Seeing the Forest for the Bees, Glimmers of Hope: Research to Tame Emerald Ash Borer, Preserving the Cape Cod Pine Barrens with Fire, and much more! Order a copy of this issue or…

Jillian Bell grew up in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, and has been fascinated with the natural world since she was a child and noticed flowers growing through the cracks of a sidewalk. Although…

Ferns have been around for a mind-boggling 360 million years. That’s more than twice the time that dinosaurs reigned, and more than 1,800 times longer than modern humans have been around. Ferns…

Northern Woodlands board member emeritus Si Balch shared this photo of a bumpy trail through the woods. What caused these icy lumps?

Since 2002, when the first emerald ash borers (EAB) were identified in Michigan and Ontario, the glistening green beetles have spread rapidly, enjoying a mostly uncontested feast. The numbers are…

Last year was a record-setting fire season out West, and national news stories about forests and fire were often tragic. However, Caren Caljouw, the prescribed fire program manager for the…

Pine barrens are sparsely vegetated shrublands, woodlands, and semi-open forests found in the Northeastern United State on sandy xeric soils. Barrens are often referred to as pine barrens, pine…

There’s something about the angle of light on early spring days in Vermont, when the snow cover is almost gone, and the sun shines through the stark canopy right down to the forest floor. The…

Viiu Niiler of Marshfield, Vermont, is the consummate artist: a lifelong painter, glassmaker, tapestry weaver, fashion designer, gourmet cook, master gardener, and musician. Considered a kind of…

Sitting on the passenger’s side floor of my pickup are three broken axes/mauls, all succumbed to the same fate by excited friends and neighbors who had “wooded” and snapped their…

The moon not yet up, we forage in near darkness, out back in the woods, the wet spot to the north, where they grow in clumps, bunched like fists, and push their first wound heads through earth in…

The short video above explains how to use a Buckthorn Blaster to control invasive plants. As our forests awaken from a long winter, some plants green-up sooner than others. While many of our native…

From the first harsh (but oh-so-welcome) kong-ga-ree of a red-winged blackbird as early as late February, to the complex and voluptuous harmonic of a wood thrush in mid-May, our northern forest…

It’s a hot, humid August morning in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the kind that usually yields thunder and lightning by day’s end. But at nearby Buck Lake – just 700 feet higher in the…

Mainly nocturnal and amazingly well camouflaged, eastern screech-owls can be very difficult to spot. Weighing a mere 4 to 8 ounces, these short, stocky owls often roost in tree cavities. Photographer…

At the small-town middle school I attended, all students were required to take woodshop and home economics in 4th grade. I didn’t really take to sewing, but working with wood and learning to use…