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…

Frogs have hopped about Earth since before the time of the dinosaurs, and it shows. Celebrated for their amphibious lifestyle and cacophonous choruses, the long arc of frog evolution has yielded other…

Bees are beloved garden visitors and are essential to a healthy ecosystem. We welcome their arrival and celebrate their vital work as pollinators, supporting the growth of flowers, plants, and trees.…

Join us for a conversation with physics professor Jon Saken about the upcoming Total Solar Eclipse that will take place on April 8th. Where and how to observe the eclipse How Eclipses Work Photography…

This week in the woods, we’re sharing a mostly-bird themed post, along with a timely PSA that despite the snowy conditions, bears are waking up. Wildlife biologists recommend bringing in feeders…

In the cosmic dance of heavenly bodies, no phenomenon possesses the drama of a solar eclipse, when the moon passes directly between the sun and earth. In the path of totality, where the moon…

High up in a steep stand of sugar maples, we found pieces of what appeared to be old metal roofing that someone, years ago, had lined up to create a chute. What is this?

Laurie Dirkx grew up a few minutes’ drive from the city of Rochester, New York, and has always been drawn to the quiet of the natural world and to animals – both wild and domestic. A…

This week in the woods, we persuaded two eye-rolling teenagers to accompany us out to a roadside swamp, where we gave them a long lecture on the wonders of skunk cabbages. The rosy spathes of these…

In the wild, finding a suitable mate is no simple matter – and it’s an extra complicated affair for one familiar resident of the woods and underbrush. With its chunky build, boldly striped…

Your February photos showed winter mammal and bird activity, ice formations, and the first glimmerings of spring, including boiling sap, blooming witch hazel, and turtles back in the sun. In Blue…

This week in the woods, if all this mud and snow has you feeling a bit desperate to see flowering plants, consider cutting some red maple stems and putting them in a jar of water on a window sill. If…

Boiling maple sap into syrup is a time-honored tradition in the Northeast, to the olfactory delight of anyone who has spent time in a steamy sugarhouse while inhaling the sweet maple scent of the…

“If I was queen for a day, there wouldn’t be separation of terrestrial and wetland conservation,” said University of Maine’s Aram Calhoun, a dogged vernal pool advocate in…

Reader Barry Wicklow found these slalom-like tracks through the snow on the edge of the woods in southern New Hampshire. What happened here?

Amara Ifeji has a unique perspective on the outdoors and environmental education – and the importance of access to those arenas. She is a first-generation American, a Mainer, and remarkably…

There’s a new invasive insect zigzagging its way across North America. First reported by citizen scientists in Quebec in 2020, the elm zigzag sawfly (Aproceros leucopoda) has now spread to North…

This Week in the Woods, we were delighted to see this eastern bluebird pair, a few yards away from an available bird house. Bluebirds are partial migrants, and during a mild winter season, when dried…

The other night, frogs crossed roads in the rain, emerged from muddy dark & wet into more of it, following water down to where it seeps & holds— the pools that won’t stay long but…

This article is the first in a four-part series that focuses on climate change impacts and adaptation in forests. A companion series published last year focused on forest carbon. Alexandra Kosiba, a…