As spring’s crescendo of birdsong mellows now to a steadier summer trill, I listen for melodies I don’t recognize and try to figure out which birds are singing. I look through binoculars…

July 1989: A stranger with a colander full of fragrant mushrooms changed my life. Reinhardt, a German scientist with wild hair, in khaki shorts, rushed into our dooryard, displayed his heap of gold…

Scanning a sunlit pond floor for crayfish, I was distracted by seven dark spots gliding in a tight formation. Six crisp oval shadows surrounded a faint, less distinct silhouette. The shapes slid…

Found on a hop hornbeam branch. What is it?

We ended our last game camera entry this way: For our next installment, we’ll set a camera up in some edge habitat on the top of a mountain in a wilderness area. We wonder what the ratio of…

“It’s chaos,” I said. Then: “I’ll call you back.” There was poop on the couch and, I’d just noticed, on my pants. I put the phone down and reached for the…

The “fisher cat” is neither of those things. Doesn’t fish. Isn’t a cat. In fact, a lot more of what people think they know about the fisher is wrong. It’s almost like we…

We’re excited about a new project we’re embarking on with Jerry Jenkins, a research ecologist, botanist, and geographer from White Creek, New York. The concept is simple: Jerry will keep a…

If you take a walk in the woods on a summer evening, you may be treated to the ethereal, flute-like song of the hermit thrush, often the only bird still singing at dusk (and the first bird to sing in…

Tree seedling identification from a distance without intact buds or fully developed leaves: What kind of tree is this?

Your May photos have a strong botanical theme, with a number of close-up images of budding leaves and blossoms. In Vermont, scientists netted and banded migratory songbirds, and in Pennsylvania, a…

Each fall, the Northern Woodlands Conference brings together people with diverse backgrounds for a weekend of boundary-spanning workshops and conversation. While forests provide a setting and theme…

“I took this image on the Subway trail on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont,” says photographer Nathanael Asaro. The trail runs parallel to the west side of the ridgeline. Asaro and a friend began…

One way that trees respond to stress is to pour energy into the dormant buds along their trunks and branches. Sprouts erupt in odd places, and a tree’s looks change rapidly. In the course of a…

When my daughter was four, she once asked, “Do mice get cavities?” We were coming back from the dentist, so teeth were on her mind and so were mice, since her pet mouse had recently…

Photographer’s Notebook: Tree and Shrub Flowers by Jerry Jenkins; Mushroom and Metaphor by Verandah Porche; Silent Sparks by Sara Lewis; Saving New England’s Rare Plants by Susan…

Like many artists, David Goodsell’s work is born of careful observation of the natural world; his landscapes just happen to be molecular – the world he presents is measured in nanometers.…

The first time I saw cordwood construction was in high school when I shadowed a consulting forester for career day. His home office was made of cordwood and provided me with my first forestry lesson.…

In logging, they say it takes iron to move wood. Eric Robinson’s job is to keep the iron moving. He’s part of the mobile service unit at CJ Logging Equipment, a Booneville, New York-based…

The word ‘migration’ conjures images of vast wildebeest or pronghorn herds crossing plains in unison, or hummingbirds traversing the Gulf of Mexico. When charismatic birds leave our New…