We don’t typically think of forest debris as a food source for freshwater fish and other aquatic organisms, but a study by researchers at the University of Cambridge in England suggests that it…

For nearly 20 years, Gary Lovett has kept a journal with notes about a variety of natural events taking place in his backyard in southeastern New York, including the date that spring peepers begin…

Maple syrup producers no longer have to wait for spring weather to know if they are likely to have a good year. A postdoctoral researcher at Tufts University has revealed that sugar maple seed…

The transition from February to March is not subtle. With hardly time to recover from a truncated month, we attend Town Meeting, cede an hour to our clocks, and navigate spontaneously erupting frost…

Glen Roberts noticed this white pine while working in the woods in New York. Why does it look like this?

So we got our first run the end of last week, and made our first syrup on March 14. That was also the day we finally finished tapping, thanks in large part to our friends Ginny and Court who traveled…

Life can be rough for the bobolink, a charismatic grassland bird whose population is declining. Halting that decline is a challenge for North American ornithologists. After all, bobolinks spend about…

If you peek into a wood duck nesting box during the breeding cycle, you might find 10 to 11 eggs, which is the bird’s normal clutch size. But you might also stumble upon a box overflowing with…

How Long Is Forever? And Can Anything Be Done in the Meantime? My wife and I own a 100-acre farm in eastern Vermont, where we raise and sell lambs, chickens, vegetables, honey, maple syrup, firewood,…

A guy down the road has been working in his woods for the last couple of years. He’s cleaning them up. And I mean cleaning. He cuts the underbrush. Takes out the dead trees, the downed logs, the…

What’s going on up there?

We usually start tapping our sugarwoods around February 1. This year it was five below zero that morning, and so there was no rush getting out there. If it’s too cold when you tap, you can split…

It’s important for a boy to have older male role models who aren’t their father. When I was growing up, Ed Colvin was one of those men in my life. Ed was my neighbor and my best friend…

My town had the job of removing a dead beaver from a culvert pipe cage, a rather sad and odorous affair, but also an opportunity. I alerted the usual suspects – there’s nothing like a…

A simple shot of a black bear nursing her cubs, right? Photographer Roger Irwin explains there’s more to the story. “I had put a dead cow out for the coyotes, bobcats, and fishers in…

I’m interested in learning more about how trees self-prune. How does a tree “decide” that a branch is no longer useful? Think of it as nature’s cost-benefit analysis. Instead…

Someone left a plastic zip bag full of soggy pink something, labeled “bobcat,” in the office sink. Naturally, I asked Dave Mance for an explanation. He pushed back from his computer…

Gallery themes: For animals that struggle with deep snow, February 2015 was an especially tough month. Your photos revealed bobcats in backyards, and owls near buildings. Other themes: foolhardy…

Forests on the Move A Logger's Diary The Plight of the Moose Self-Pruning Branches, Stinging Nettle Soup, Strong Owl Stomachs, and much more

The porcupine is one of the most unique and recognizable mammals in the Northwoods. And thanks to its short legs and fat body, it’s also one of the slowest. Of course, a porcupine really has…