Geoff Dennis took this photo during a migratory fallout on Monhegan Island. On May 17, 2011, flocks of warblers, flying over the Gulf of Maine on their way to northern forests, were caught in severe…

I wake in darkness, and spend a full five minutes trying to decide why. The tip of my nose is frozen where it protrudes from the icy hole of my sleeping bag. The rest of me is marginally warmer but…

Young campers caught this blue morph green frog at Townshend State Park in Vermont, where Tiffany Soukup and her husband Chris served as rangers. In blue morph frogs, a genetic mutation prevents the…

Above our field, the land dips and rises, and in the fold there’s a vernal pool. It’s well shaded and slow to thaw, and this time of year, it serves as the family rink. The kids take…

Our readers often have questions about old-growth forests: what they are, how to identify them, their relevance to climate change mitigation, and (absent a time machine) how to replicate their…

Mitch Ryerson is an artist, designer, and craftsman of fine furniture. In recent years, he has also created play structures for schools and parks. He uses Berkshires-sourced black locust for this…

Seed, Transplant, or Just Let Nature Take Its Course? Some Considerations. As I walk through my woods in spring and early summer, I usually stick to the trails. I want to avoid stepping on any of the…

Lumberjack contests have evolved from loosely organized gatherings to highly competitive sports events with an international following. Today’s top competitors train intensely to master skills…

A Conversation with Champion Lumberjill Kendall Kunelius by Mark Kuney; Restoring Wildflowers to the Woods by Joe Rankin; New England K-9 Search & Rescue by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul; Z Shape Legs…

The Confusing History of New England’s Arctic Char, and Current Efforts to Conserve Them My earliest memory of fishing is of my father baiting a hook for me with a small piece of slab bacon as I…

Reader Asheley Cole sent us a photograph of a January scene on the Green River near her home. Intrigued, we asked her for more images, and she shared this series, showing the river in different…

Every once in a while, as I’m tramping through the winter woods on my snowshoes, it occurs to me that I am walking on top of frogs. In winter, our thoughts naturally turn to the species who…

Art Krueger and his wife Trish Norton have been making and selling maple syrup from their Krueger-Norton Sugarhouse in Shrewsbury, Vermont, for more than three decades. By Vermont standards, their…

This spinning jenny is sitting high in a sugarbush. Why?

The seed dispersal habits of small mammals have long been known to have a significant bearing on the health and growth of forests. A doctoral student at the University of Maine has found that the…

A team of researchers studying snowpack decline found that snowless winters leave trees stunted. In a series of forest manipulation experiments begun in 2007 at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in…

The view – sacrosanct in many indigenous cultures – that the natural, material world is animate not inert, has long been considered as heresy by conventional Euro-American theologians and…

When we talk about trees, we often talk about the wilder among them, the rarer, the grander. And although beech trees can be wild and grand, they aren’t exactly rare. Pioneers in the understory,…

The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild Tom Seeley is an authority on honey bees. His wonderful book Honey Bee Democracy describes how bees decide on a new home and Wisdom of the Hive is about…

On a walk one winter afternoon, I spotted two white objects darting across a snow-covered field. White on white, they were difficult to identify at first. It was a short-tailed weasel chasing a…