Next time you’re watching your favorite backyard squirrel, think about this: she may be watching you, too. Scientists have discovered that gray squirrels deliberately mislead onlookers that may…

The prices reported here are those that log buyers—mostly sawmills and wholesalers—are paying for logs. Because these are prices paid for delivered wood, landowners need to adjust the…

A few weeks ago, I was working outside during one of winter’s warm spells.  The sun shone, and the temperature was in the low 40s.  From the edge of the woods, a hopeful chickadee sang…

On a recent trip to East Africa I was swept off my feet by the baobob tree, as has happened to many other travelers. How can a long-lived, successful tree be so entirely unlike all the other trees,…

Forrest Hammond slid a few feet down a hillside before he grabbed the trunk of a sapling to catch himself. With his crampons now planted rather securely in the ice, he edged down the hill until he…

The scene opens with six women standing in a forest clearing. Chainsaws rest on the ground at their feet. Some of the women wear helmets. Some of them wear chaps. One of them (me) is staring in horror…

Ah, mushrooms. For the wild mushroom hunter, making a fungi foray into a forest erupting with golden chanterelles, bursting with radiant oyster mushrooms, and scattered with black trumpets is like…

On a crisp, early morning in October, a small group of naturalists made their way down a winding trail through an isolated state forest in Derry, New Hampshire, to visit a lone American chestnut, one…

John Sullivan didn’t set out to have his forest certified. He just wanted to take good care of the woods. His 300 acres near Chestertown, New York, have been in the family since 1875, when his…

For years, birders have had a wide variety of multimedia educational tools to help them learn bird identification and natural history. Beginning with cassette and VHS tapes, to CDs, CD-ROMs,…

In early March, when many cold-weary souls head south for a late winter respite, others spend their days in toasty ice-fishing shacks on still-frozen ponds and on the bays of quiet rivers. They have…

Certification Comes to Family Forests Growing Your Own Mushrooms Springtime in the Turkey Woods Can the American Chestnut Come Back?

I came across a recent story in The Oregonian (“Fall in wood products market redirects environmentalist strategy,” by Michael Milstein, December 20, 2008) talking about the changing…

Cold. The low-angled winter sun burning dully through a nickel-colored sky. Cold. The kind that bores into you, a stinging insect as it breaches the skin, then tingly as it fords your blood, and…

For many in New England, the grey days of March are among the sweetest of the year. March is when sugarmakers hike to their sugar maples, drill tap-holes into trees, hang buckets and await the welcome…

The 2009 season began in earnest last Friday. We had a small run in our southern Vermont sugarbush – enough to make the first syrup of the year. The beginning of the year is always the most…

The tracks in the snow were everywhere, penetrating into the deepest parts of the thicket, where only small animals go. Inching across frozen landscape on snowshoes, and ducking eye-level twigs, we…

At 6:00 in the morning, clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitoes hover outside the bug net on Len Reitsma’s head as he hikes through a wet forest to his field-study site. A dull light glints off the…

Times are tough. There’s absolutely no getting around it. Job losses, foreclosures, an anxious nation that’s holding its breath waiting to see how bad it’s going to get. Facing those…

Like ghosts from the Arctic, snowy owls have descended on New England this winter. They’re showing up in fields, along highways and in some backyards. These migrations from the arctic tundra are…