Bright red, soft, and velvety… no, I’m not describing a Valentine’s Day decoration, but a red velvet mite. Built like eight-legged, scarlet Beanie Babies, red velvet mites are hard…

You know Orion always comes up sideways. Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, And rising on his hands, he looks in on me… So wrote Robert Frost in his poem The Star-splitter. The…

This week in the woods, we discovered this barred owl napping below the eaves of a barn. We took these images from approximately 20 yards away, using a zoom lens, to avoid disturbing the owl’s…

The oaks are not doing well at Black Rock Forest. Their growth has slowed as new species of trees have found their way into the woods, and pathogens (such as the fungus that causes oak wilt), insects…

Carbon offset programs often withhold 10 to 20 percent of offsets generated by a project, as a buffer against changes to the forest that might affect carbon storage over a century or more. But this…

Red Rocks Park in South Burlington, Vermont, takes its name from the iron-tinged Monkton Quartzite, formed some 500 million years ago. But above the old red sandstone are bands of younger limestone,…

For such a tiny creature, hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) can cause a remarkable amount of devastation. This non-native, aphidlike insect sucks the nutrients out of hemlock trees, and – because of…

The horned lark (Eremophila alpestris), so named for its tiny feather tufts resembling miniature devil horns, is the only true lark species native to North America. These birds nest on prairies,…

At Hoffman Evergreen Preserve in Stonington, Connecticut, southern trees are growing in forest clearings. Where dense stands of hemlock once shadowed the ground, the terminal buds of loblolly and…

There is nothing that can match the feeling of being on a mountain summit, standing on what seems like the top of the world. Here – with peaks and valleys stretching into forever – is one…

Growing up in Stamford, Connecticut, Lisa Sausville reveled in trips to her family’s retreat near a working dairy farm once owned by her great-grandparents in a rural part of the state. There,…

Reader Lori van Handel found this impression in the snow on the side of Sheep Hill in Williamstown, Massachusetts – and saw the bird that made it. What happened here? And what’s your best guess of…

For an owl, choosing the perfect place to nest is a balancing act. It’s not just about finding a hole in a tree or the side of a barn. The entry must be big enough to let the owl and its mate…

My yard is full of eastern white pine trees, and every three years or so, it is full of pine cones. This is one of those years. Pine cones have fallen all over the yard, the sidewalk, the driveway.…

This week in the woods, we found occasional mixed winter flocks of titmice, chickadees, and nuthatches, as well as this male hairy woodpecker, which was busily harvesting soft-bodied somethings…

This Week in the Woods, we spotted a red crossbill, shown here in silhouette far, far away on the top of a tree, where he’d been calling incessantly. In the silhouette, you can easily discern…

In mid-winter 1988, I went contra-dancing at the Congregational Church in Lyme, New Hampshire. During intermission, I joined other dancers who stepped out of the overheated hall into a star-studded…

With snow blanketing much of the Northeast, there’s not much color in the woods right now. However, if you happen to be out in a hemlock grove, you just might spot one of these shiny, reddish forms.…

Your December photos included winter birds, early ice, and evidence of squirrels’ appreciation for this year’s bountiful white pine cone supply. In Kingsbury Plantation, Maine, Kent Nelson…

A child of the Midwest, Robert “Thor” Thorson loved the lakes and forests of that region from an early age. Although he started his career as a geologist in Alaska – with a…