36 results for Brett Amy Thelen

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…

This week, we’re straying out of the woods, and out of our “15 miles from the office” rule, to share a photo by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul of a snapping turtle crossing a road…

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…

Last year, I showed up to work on October 31 in one of my old park ranger’s uniforms, torn to fake-bloody shreds in an imaginary bear attack. One year earlier, I drank smoothies for…

As a kid, I was fascinated and terrified by the idea of carnivorous plants. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, my only exposure to this particular subset of the plant kingdom was the ravenous,…

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…

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…

Upstairs in the Northern Woodlands office hangs a copy of Charles Joseph Minard’s map depicting France’s 1812 invasion of Russia. It’s a remarkable work, both for the story…

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…

Every autumn, when the air tastes of apples and leaves crunch underfoot, my thoughts turn to tiny owls – northern saw-whet owls (Aegolius acadicus) to be exact. Just eight inches in…

Recently, common nighthawks have been passing through the Connecticut River Valley. These early migrators are, unfortunately, endangered across much of our region, and now is the only time in…

One moonless May evening, my husband and I walked down to our local pond, flashlights in hand, to look for toads. We were delighted to discover hundreds of them, floating, darting, and…

There’s a myth environmental educators like to tell, and it goes something like this: after every long northern winter, spring returns. Days lengthen, temperatures rise, the snowpack…

Every so often, my friend David texts me a picture of roadkill. A fisher trailing a single strand of blood-red sinew. A wind-roused pile of porcupine quills. A bobcat in graceful, permanent…

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…

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…