The nature of a quarterly magazine timed to publish with the change of seasons means that I’m writing my column for this Autumn issue during the hottest, muggiest days of summer. The green…

Bumble bees are culturally iconic and essential to our environment. While unwittingly inspiring classical music, soft toys, and jewelry, bumble bees pollinate flowers both obscure and important to…

Today, four days from the end of October, I plan to walk the edge of a small creek. As the raven flies, it’s 15 miles east of our house, two ridges into the Ridge and Valley, yet I’ve…

Insect pollinators provide critical ecosystem services across the planet. A 2011 study in the journal Oikos estimated that between 75 and 95 percent of the planet’s flowering plant species,…

People are exposed to ticks across diverse outdoor environments, from backyard gardens to backcountry wilderness. To limit tick-borne diseases, we can discourage ticks from biting us by wearing…

About a year ago, I took over Northern Woodlands’ This Week in the Woods blog, which my predecessor and skilled observer Elise Tillinghast began during the pandemic and wrote for four years.…

No flower can last forever. Indeed, most seem to last only a few days – or hours! – and leave us wanting for something less transient. The more delicate the bloom, the more ephemeral its…

This week in the woods, a red eft ventured out of the leaf litter in defiance of the dry conditions and flaunted its orange skin, more luminous even than the impending fall foliage. You might see this…

The garden is attracting so much life! Each day brings new or familiar visitors – monarchs drifting among the flowers, hummingbirds flashing past, bees and wasps at work, and tree frogs tucked…

This issue features: Game of Logging Maine Forest Bioproducts Foraging for Fashion Alpine Stewardship, and much more! Order a copy of this issue or visit Subscription Services to subscribe to our…

Mike Gallagher is a research ecologist and the lead scientist at the U.S. Forest Service’s Silas Little Experimental Forest in the New Jersey pine barrens. Mike has turned his lifelong interest…

Reader Will Durkin came across this nest in a farm field in Franklin County, Vermont. What animal created it?

Among the blooming perennials of late summer is one that guards its secrets closely. The lockbox blossoms of white turtlehead (Chelone glabra), a native plant in the plantain family, are an ideal…

Installed just last summer, the Northern Woodlands Pollinator Garden is now in full bloom. Stop by to enjoy a wide variety of native perennials – most of them started from seed and grown right…

Perhaps you saw the flyers at your town office or a warning sign posted at your favorite swimming hole. The smell might have driven you home, but maybe you crept closer – unable to see anything…

Kass Urban-Mead is a pollinator conservation specialist, NRCS partner biologist, and the forests and forestry lead at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. After working as the…

This sessile-leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia) is spotted with bright green dots while the rest of the plant turns yellow. What’s happening here?

The July photos captured summer in its prime – plants in full bloom, parents caring for their young, and perhaps some planning ahead for cooler months. A beautiful water lily was viewed by…

This week in the woods, an ambush bug perched in patient silence, eyes bulging, as it awaited prey atop a white turtlehead blooming in Corinth, Vermont. Like little Nosferatus of late-summer meadows,…

Survey the insects orbiting a globe of milkweed blossoms or the delicate blooms of a chokeberry, and you might spy an apparent chimera. It looks a bit like a bee, perhaps a tad like a wasp, and it…