Twenty years ago when I bought my farm I made a snap decision to clear some woods near the house, all the way back to the stone wall. Out came the chainsaw and trees started crashing down. I never…

Aldo Leopold, a famous conservationist, once wrote: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” This whole idea puts nature writers in…

This snipe fly was found in Thetford, Vermont, dead and smooshed against a sugar maple leaf. What killed the fly?

I’ve gotten addicted to the television show “Breaking Bad” over the last few months, watching old episodes back to back on Netflix. At one part in Season 3, Gus, a civilized…

“I’ve got some pellets here.” “Here’s a run!” The run was a path in the snow made by rabbits – specifically, rare and imperiled New England cottontails. The…

In years when the snow is deep, voles, the most abundant mammal in the Northeast, thrive. When the snow recedes, the glaring white of rodent-chewed bark shows up on saplings along field edges,…

It can be difficult for beginning foragers to make the leap beyond the most familiar wild foods. For those who want to expand their repertoires beyond ramps, fiddleheads, and blueberries, I cannot…

In early summer, my roses are buzzing with bees. European honeybees from my hives are tripping over the tiny metallic native bees while burly black and yellow bumblebees, the sumo wrestlers in this…

Four native fish species. Left to right, what are they?

OK, so back to the clearcut. (If you missed Part 1 of the blog, read it here.) By meeting certain silvicultural criteria, and by agreeing to execute the clearcut in a bird-friendly way (nothing…

On the first 70 degree day of the year we took a UTV ride up to the top of the ridge behind camp, G and I. She’s originally from Wyoming, so she sees the forests around here with fresh eyes.…

The heavy rains of late have turned some homeowners in our region into hydraulic engineers, their sump pumps working overtime to pump rainwater out of flooded basements. When saddled with such a…

Anyone who’s made his or her way up a mountain is familiar with the sometimes startling transformation of the landscape, from leafy hardwood stands to thick and prickly green cathedrals of red…

Blackbirds do it. Chickadees do it. Even educated emus do it. Some birds are cheaters. Their trysts, dalliances, one-morning stands, and other infidelities would constitute a racy script for a…

Many of us are familiar with Rebecca Merrilees’ work from the indispensable field guide Trees of North America, which she illustrated 34 years ago. It is probably on all of our bookshelves,…

If you are peering into one of those GPS devices many people now find indispensable, everything, anywhere, is shown in relation to your own location. With GPS, you’re always at the center of…

The Northeast has become a hive of ecological counter-intuition, at least by the framework of any living memory. According to Jim Sterba’s Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife…

Saving the New England Cottontail Maine's Pre-settlement Forest Alpine Wildflowers: Life at the Top Growing Trees from Seed Forest Forensics, Cooking with Cattails, The Ways of the Woodchuck, and…

We all see our forests for the trees, but the woods are alive with other plants. Among the most common are ferns, which don’t just get by in the deep shade of the forest – they flourish.…

This flower was recently spotted emerging near our office. What is it?