Last weekend, there was a tussle in the lilac bush in our front yard, and when the snow settled, what was revealed was one weasel and one very agitated red squirrel. The weasel ducked into the shed.…

Winter Tree ID: Do you know what tree this is, with diamond-shaped bumps along its lower trunk?

Hundreds of years ago, haunting bugle-like calls echoed through these hills and valleys. The sounds were made by bull elk to attract mates and fend off rivals. Elk in the Northeast? Yes, elk were once…

George Bellerose, a photojournalist from Weybridge, Vermont, has spent the last five years documenting the experiences of people who work in the forests of Addison County, Vermont. The Vermont…

The sound of the gray jay evokes an image of the deep North Woods: dark green spruce trees, spire-like balsam fir, and bare-branched tamaracks silhouetted against a raw, slate-colored sky; the smell…

The other day I was driving through New Hampshire’s Crawford Notch, where my eyes are usually drawn to the tall mountains and long, cascading waterfalls on either side of the road. But on this…

Tom Norton sent along this photo at the end of December, with the following note: “Today my wife and I were walking near the Ompompanoosuc River in Thetford, Vermont, and were surprised to see…

I have yet to hear of any snowy owls nearby this winter, although they’re on the move in the Northeast; Cornell’s eBird site includes recent sightings along the New England coast, in the…

In your December photos, a young piebald deer encountered a mature buck, an otter crossed the snow at sunrise, and a horse and rider travelled an old road-turned-trail. Photographer Ken Hatch…

The application of road salt to highways, sidewalks, and parking lots has resulted in improved winter driving and walking conditions. But salt is easily dissolved. It leaches into groundwater or runs…

Trees in urban areas provide tremendous benefits to society. They remove air pollution, reduce energy use, filter storm-water runoff, and reduce ultraviolet radiation. They also improve the physical…

Few things seem as remote as the January sun in northern New England. We see the light, but we feel almost no heat. In this way, winter can feel like a kind of exile – there’s a sense that…

The Fen is a private wildlife reserve in northeastern Connecticut. The 30-acre parcel was purchased in the spring of 2016 by Bet and Patrick Smith; here, Bet, who has a master’s degree from the…

Foragers gravitate toward the margins – hedgerows, roadsides, the shallow waters at the edge of a pond or lake, and the unkempt boundaries between woods and lawn. The forager’s path seldom…

While most insects in the Hemiptera order are land-dwelling (including stink bugs and assassin bugs), a few, such as these backswimmers, are aquatic. In the fall, when most insect hatches have ceased,…

Temperatures may plunge to 50 degrees below zero on Nunavik Quebec’s Ungava peninsula. But there, at the northernmost edge of our northern woodlands, lives a species of bird that toughs it out…

Some people keep lifelong birding lists. I’ve tried, but birds and I have never really hit it off. Too many colors, too many species, and I’m tone deaf, so birding by ear is completely…

In January, I found myself preparing for a reindeer round-up with a Finnish family in Jääskö, one of the 54 herding districts in Lapland, Finland. We were fortunate that the weather was…

Recently, I’ve been learning about ancient forests. This started when a teacher I met at an educators’ conference gave me a chunk of shale covered in fern fossils from the Llewellyn…

Like a lot of rural kids, my introduction to furbearing animals came through trapping. It’s not an easy endeavor ever – especially when you’re 12 – so the powers of the animals…