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Summer Sky

G and I were out for a walk the other night, talking about and wondering why the sky has been so beautiful for the last month. Evening after evening of just impossible grandeur. Every night the sky so…

July 2015

Your July photos revealed bears on the move, young birds just out of the nest, and mountain sandwort in bloom. Paper birch cake was on the menu at the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation, Maine teachers…

ATVs: Recreation and Conservation

ATV Users and Conservationists Find Common Ground The jagged spit of New Hampshire’s Coos County reaches north to Canada, with Vermont at its western border, Maine to the east, and the White…

Keeping it Clean Downstream

In peaceful streams, aquatic macroinvertebrates such as crayfish, stoneflies, and caddisflies travel over and under submerged rocks, foraging for other invertebrates, leaves, and algae. When rain…

On Space Probes and Oak Seedlings

In November 12, 2014, an unmanned European spacecraft by the name of “Philae” landed on a comet named Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G) as it was hurtling across the galaxy at a speed of…

Spider Silk

There is an all-natural material, produced at room temperature, that can be used to build homes, to make protective coverings, to hunt and trap, and even to swing through the air. It’s…

White Pine Then and Now

We’re doing a big story on white pine blister rust in the Autumn issue, and in tracking down art for the piece came across a cool old type-written report on eastern white pine that was published…

Colorful Conundrum

Colorful, yes, but what is it?

Living on the Fledge

On a recent afternoon, I was driving on my road in Thetford when I saw a baby ruffed grouse about the size of a pin cushion scurry into the bushes. I had the same impulse I did as a 10-year-old when I…

Tracking Tips: Nose Probes and Digs

A nesting robin was incessantly scolding something that was moving along the length of a downed log. I knelt and studied the area, and soon saw a flash of white, and thereafter the recognizable…

Elms on the Rebound?

On a recent damp May morning I walked around Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, with arborist Brian Beaty. While he is responsible for all of the trees in the center of the campus, our visit…

Funky Wood Mystery

When we see wood with funky colors and grain patterns we tend to assume it came from the tropics. But these three boards were milled from species growing in Vermont. Left to right, tell us the wood…

Birch Peelers

The birch bark peelers arrived in a pickup pulling a covered trailer. There was a 4-wheeler in it, a smaller trailer, and sheets of cardboard and stickers for the bark. They unloaded the 4-wheeler and…

June 2015

This June was an exceptionally wet month in the Northeast, and many of your photos had a water theme. Love was in the air for promethea moths, and sawdust was in the air for a kid taking his first…

Flat Stanley and the Centipede

Biologists sometimes field questions about a “huge scary bug” that appeared in someone’s home or worse yet on their person. Most turn out to be benign organisms that ended up in the…

The Hatch

The evening was warm, even for August, and the pitcher for the home team Lowell Spinners was having trouble finding the plate. Millions of white mayflies, disoriented by the bright lights of the…

Sumac-ade

I’m not the type to crave foods, wild or otherwise, but on the hottest days of summer when the cicadas are whirring, I do get a serious hankering for sumac-ade. No wild drink is easier to…

Yankee Tarheels: Remembering the Pitch Pine Industry of Colonial America

Gone are the days when many in the Northeast relied on pitch pine, and in many cases, gone are the trees themselves. But you can still find this historic tree with the alligator-scale-like bark if you…

The Tree Fox

When you think of foxes (if you ever do), you likely picture the ginger-coated red fox, like Mr. Tod from Beatrix Potter’s fantastical children’s tales, only without the dapper suitcoat…

Mystery Unfolding

What is this (or rather, what will it be)?