When a tree nears the end of its life span, woodpeckers may arrive to puncture holes in its trunk. Rainwater running into the openings can carry bacterial and fungal spores that attack cellulose and…

Have you noticed a few more wisps of gray of late? An ache in your joints? Crow’s feet clawing around the corners of your eyes? If so, you’re well on your way to becoming a victim of one…

Manipulating ecosystems to affect biodiversity and examine species interactions can be an overwhelming challenge, especially when trying to understand complete food webs. Unless, that is, the…

It’s been one of the cooler, wetter summers in memory, enough so that everyday banter about the weather seems even more ubiquitous than usual. A friend in Maine emailed that his pumpkins had…

Like most of you, I spend my summer leisure time contemplating the tongue of the primrose moth. OK, it’s not exactly a tongue. Butterflies and moths have a straw-like proboscis that they coil…

The strangest animal I had ever seen crossed in front of my car, near the Thetford–Norwich line on the Connecticut River in Vermont last summer. It had a pointed snout, a tubular body and a long…

First, full disclosure: I’m the general manager of New England Wood Pellet in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Our company has a financial interest in seeing the use of biomass pellet fuels grow in the…

On a meadow walk the other day, near my home in St. Johnsbury, Vt., I noticed a bright green insect dart along the path as I approached, then rocket into flight and disappear. It was a tiger beetle of…

We were on a gravel road that wound through a hayfield—just walking through, talking as we went. At first the butterflies were so tiny that we didn’t really notice them. But then they were…

In areas where even a light controlled burn can be dangerous to surrounding communities, forestry officials at the Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area in west-central Massachusetts is one of the…

One day I looked out my kitchen window and noticed two birds I had never seen before, digging in the gravel on my driveway, They were larger than the juncos that hunt for seeds among the driveway…

Any reader might well ask, on first hefting this 586-page book, “Isn’t it too long?” This reader’s answer is an unqualified “No.” I can’t claim I read it in…

The hiking trails throughout the Northeast provide affordable recreational and educational opportunities for everyone, but it’s easy to forget how much effort goes into constructing and…

The early light of dawn was filtering into the bedroom, when I heard that faint but distinctive pounding, as though someone were pounding with a tiny ball peen hammer. Ratta tatta tat-tat-tat. I knew…

Vermont’s Current Use Program is one of those rare pieces of legislation that garners high praise from both the left and right side of the political spectrum. Established in 1980 as a way of…

When the alarm sounded on a hot and dry weekday afternoon in April, fire crews from Londonderry, N.H., rushed in tanker trucks and pickups not to a burning house but to a fire at the University of New…

So the other day a mass mailing went out to landowners in Corinth, Vermont from a timber harvest/tree removal company in New Hampshire. The company was peddling their services, which include tree…

When it comes to fires, forest management practices across the U.S. have evolved considerably in recent decades, from complete fire suppression in all forests to the realization that fire plays an…

Who knows whether or not an apple a day does what it’s supposed to, or whether Dr. D.C. Jarvis was right about the healthful properties of apple cider vinegar. I do know that I feel better when…

One of the pleasures of the brief northern spring is moseying-about in back forties to learn what birds are arriving, what insects are emerging and what flowers are blooming.  And among the most…