This picture, circa the mid-1980s, shows biologist Will Staats surrounded by scarred saplings. What, specifically, caused this damage?

Each time we send out a newsletter, maybe 300 people look at the What in The Woods is That picture, between 50 and 100 regularly venture guesses, and about a half dozen send us in-depth answers that…

Whenever a frigid overcast day comes along, I develop a powerful urge to return to bed for a spell. So does Monty, the cat, who after rising for breakfast and watching birds through a frosted window,…

Sort of other worldy, huh? What in the woods is it?

We were on the ice by 6:30, loaded for bear with tip-ups, axes, augers, bait fish, cooking implements and the likes, the three of us heading out across a virgin snowpack on a lake that seemed to…

Some time ago our neighbor called me over at dusk to observe a flying squirrel eating seed at his bird feeder. I had never encountered this animal and was most intrigued. Afterwards I said to myself,…

In mid-December, a delegation from the Vermont Forestry Division and the Agency of Agriculture traveled to Quebec to meet with emerald ash borer (EAB) specialists immersed in the Carignan infestation…

Chris Demers of Willington, Connecticut, took this photo a few weeks back after a fresh snowfall. What made these strange marks?

Winter in Northern New England is challenging for birds that don’t migrate south. To survive, a bird must find adequate food, refuge from wind and cold, and protection from predators.…

In winter, Lynn Malerba’s peak experiences don’t occur on mountaintops. Her idea of a great February weekend is to teach a small group of novice explorers how to thrive on the valley…

While conducting a study of old-growth trees at Huntington Forest in Long Lake, New York, research specialists Steve Signell and Colin Beire came across a fairly nondescript, fallen hemlock tree. The…

“The vast commercial enterprise and history of logging in Vermont seems like a hidden powerhouse without the public face (and attendant sympathy) that agriculture has here. My hope is that in…

Reader Karen Jackson was loading her woodstove when this piece of bark fell off a log. The underside was covered in lacy designs. What caused these patterns?

When nature calls, a birdwatcher should consider spishing in the woods. Nature calling, in this case, is the unmusical peeps, chips, tweets and whits of songbirds in winter. Lacking the imperative to…

Wooden tires went out of style a century ago, along with buggy whips and horse-drawn wagons, but if an Oregon State University researcher has anything to say about it, a modern relative of the wooden…

The diversity of behavior among bird species is nowhere so dramatic as in their nest construction. Each species builds a specifically precise nest that differs in functional ways from those of almost…

Three months ago, our fields and forests buzzed and chirped with six-legged life: cicadas overhead, crickets underfoot. Now snow has blanketed the landscape, and they and most other insects are gone…

Given an estimated around-the-globe average of 100,000 of them per cubic meter of soil, it seems astonishing that springtails (the tiny creatures often called “snowfleas”) are frequently…

A trapper in southern Vermont submitted this photo showing the tanned pelts of three Northeastern mammals. From left to right, what are they?

For years, frustrated log-truck drivers in Vermont have struggled with arcane federal weight limits on interstate highways. The weight limits kept log trucks off the interstates, and instead funneled…