This spring-flowering plant is fairly common in the Northeast, though it may not be recognizable yet. What plant is it? (The common name for the species is acceptable.)

We’re a generally rooted species – at least our contingent; the ones for whom place might be analogized to a limb that the body would not function properly without. It’s easy to…

Your April photos showed the forest in transition, from a snowshoe hare shedding its white coat to red maple buds opening in the sun. Fox kits played and an eastern comma butterfly emerged from its…

On the western side of Vermont, the Otter Creek wanders leisurely through hayfields before easing into Lake Champlain. Wildlife abounds, with shore-nesting bald eagles and ospreys, mud-scrambling…

The canoe scraped noisily onto the gravel bar on the point of one of the great bends in the northern Connecticut River. I’ve stopped to see a remnant of the floodplain forest that once covered…

Janet Hayward Burnham, of Bethel,  Vermont, was driving to the bank one day when she saw a tree on the side of the road that looked like it was covered in decorative webbing, “cans and…

Growing up, I spent many summer afternoons along the banks of a local canal snatching painted turtles as they basked on fallen logs. For many of us, turtles are the gateway animals that start a…

The big white birds paddling gracefully across a Massachusetts pond last November surprised me. I’d grown up in the town I was visiting and had never seen swans there, although my friend assured…

We’ll be publishing our next Reader’s Photo Gallery on May 11, and what a pleasure it has been after a long winter to see your images of spring wildlife, from bear cubs to migratory…

One last (hopefully) snow scene. A reader happened upon this stirred up patch of bloody snow last weekend on a backcountry ski high in the Green Mountains. What do you suppose caused this commotion?…

I spent every afternoon with my infant daughter last May – it was both an act of love and a reflection of the childcare juggling act that parents do these days. She wasn’t a great napper,…

Imagine taking a walk through a part of New England you’ve never seen—how it was 190 million years ago. This New England is hot, and the infrequently replenished lakes are surrounded by…

The recent decline in the population of bees and other pollinators because of pesticides, climate change, diseases, and other causes has raised alarms among those concerned about crop production and…

In the pre-dawn hours of April 22, the Lyrid meteor shower will peak. About 15 to 20 meteors will be visible each hour, which really is not very many. By comparison, the Perseid meteor shower in…

A scene in crusty-snow. What are the objects on top of the snow and why are they concentrated in a line?

Brick Moltz, the education director at The Fells Historic Estate on Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire, shared this wonderful series of images of a fox settling down in front of a game camera with us and…

So it never came back for us. It’s been perfect sap weather here for the last few weeks, but there’s been no sap coming out of our lines. The sap’s running – I’ve been…

When I was growing up, my family rented a vacation home on a mountain in southern Vermont. One night we were awakened by our dogs barking. Soon we heard a persistent gnawing on the outside of the…

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 slowly…

So the cumulative effect of the four March Nor’easters hit this area hard. Ten miles away from our Hall bush and 800 feet up in elevation, one weather-watcher documented 81 inches of snow that…