Years ago, a hitchhiker found a baby red squirrel beneath a tree and brought it to the nature center where I worked as a naturalist and wildlife rehabilitator. The squirrel kit had not yet opened its…

Naila Moreira teaches science writing at Smith College. Her journalism, nature writing, fiction, and poetry have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Scientific American, numerous literary…

A Northern Woodlands staff member was walking along a river in Virginia when she found this sweet-smelling, multicolored goo dripping down the side of a toppled stump, directly under some recently cut…

The shift begins around the time we turn the clocks ahead, a gradual transition from winter’s steady chorus of chickadees, squawking jays, and crows cawing over the compost pile to – well,…

This Week in the Woods, hermit thrushes are back and flitting around in pairs, with stops along the way to rummage in leaf litter for tasty invertebrates. One of the key identifying traits of these…

This week in the woods, one of our most exquisite spring ephemeral wildflowers is starting to bloom. Bloodroot — a member of the poppy family that gets its name from the red juice in its roots…

For nearly 15 years, I have been exploring the headwaters of a river near my home. The entire drainage area, encompassing all the streams, rainfall, and snowmelt that pass into a single river, is…

We found this mound, and four others just like it – each measuring approximately 2 to 3 inches wide, and each spaced at least a foot from the others – on a sandy hill in Thetford, Vermont. What…

Ryan Heck started college as an environmental sciences major, but an elective class shifted his focus toward social work and human services. As someone who turns to the natural world to find balance…

Your March photos showed the early glimmerings of spring, including returning common merganser pairs, worm-hunting American woodcock, and the first brave amphibians returning to vernal pools. This…

If you take to the water this spring, there’s a good chance you’ll spot a great blue heron, New England’s most recognizable large wading bird. But you might also see one of several…

Most weeks, this blog covers relatively easy-to-see species. This week, we’re making an exception, for a happy reason: this past week, a team of volunteers documented four-toed salamanders…

In the spring of 2024 Northern Woodlands worked with Charlie Levesque and Alexandra Kosiba to publish A Guide to Forest Carbon in the Northeast. The guide includes the four forest carbon articles that…

In spring 2024, Northern Woodlands worked with Charlie Levesque and Alexandra Kosiba to publish A Guide to Forest Carbon in the Northeast. The guide includes the four forest carbon articles that…

The sharpest contrast between rivers and lakes is in water movement. While rivers flow inexorably downhill, lake water movement is more subtle. Anyone who has weathered a storm on a lake, however, can…

This week in the woods, one of our most exciting finds was, by design, not very exciting to look at. This is a well-hidden active barred owl nest, a status we realized a few seconds after taking this…

April 2024 presents an opportunity to experience two rare and spectacular astronomical sightings in northern New England. A total solar eclipse will occur for the first time in our region since 1932,…

Thomas Seeley is a professor of biology in Cornell University’s Department of Neurology and Behavior and the author of Piping Hot Bees & Boisterous Buzz-Runners: 20 Mysteries of Honey Bee…

A reader in central Vermont found this black, bumpy structure, about 5 inches long, nestled in patch of forest floor where snow had recently receded. Mutant pinecone? Sleeping porcupine? What is this?

This week in the woods, we’re at a seasonal tipping point, when there’s still snow blanketing many areas, but on sunny, south-facing slopes, the first wildflowers are blooming. We found…