One of the best parts about having older fishing companions is that trips often double as history lessons. Last weekend one such lesson unfolded on the banks of Somerset Reservoir, a bucolic piece of…

This peculiar, purple object was seen hanging near a campground in the Adirondacks. What is it?

It is summer, but we see glimmers of early autumn now and then – a change in the light, goldenrods and asters blooming, mushrooms of various species emerging and proliferating in fields and…

Research suggests that female wood frogs exercise no choice in their mate; rather, the male frog “chooses” them. “Why then,” Bernd Heinrich asks in his new book, “do male…

Each year the Maplerama event – an excuse for sugarmakers from around the state to get together, talk shop, and get excited about the upcoming season. The buzz at this year’s banquet was…

This mushroom seems to ooze out of a dead maple in Corinth, Vermont. What is it?

Amanda Priestley is on the hunt for a tree killer, and she wants your help. Priestley is an outreach specialist with the

When we tout the benefits of country living, safety is often at the top of the list. (“I never lock my doors!”) Break-ins and vandalism are rare – you don’t expect to walk out…

When a tree nears the end of its life span, woodpeckers may arrive to puncture holes in its trunk. Rainwater running into the openings can carry bacterial and fungal spores that attack cellulose and…

Have you noticed a few more wisps of gray of late? An ache in your joints? Crow’s feet clawing around the corners of your eyes? If so, you’re well on your way to becoming a victim of one…

Manipulating ecosystems to affect biodiversity and examine species interactions can be an overwhelming challenge, especially when trying to understand complete food webs. Unless, that is, the…

It’s been one of the cooler, wetter summers in memory, enough so that everyday banter about the weather seems even more ubiquitous than usual. A friend in Maine emailed that his pumpkins had…

Like most of you, I spend my summer leisure time contemplating the tongue of the primrose moth. OK, it’s not exactly a tongue. Butterflies and moths have a straw-like proboscis that they coil…

The strangest animal I had ever seen crossed in front of my car, near the Thetford–Norwich line on the Connecticut River in Vermont last summer. It had a pointed snout, a tubular body and a long…

First, full disclosure: I’m the general manager of New England Wood Pellet in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Our company has a financial interest in seeing the use of biomass pellet fuels grow in the…

On a meadow walk the other day, near my home in St. Johnsbury, Vt., I noticed a bright green insect dart along the path as I approached, then rocket into flight and disappear. It was a tiger beetle of…

We were on a gravel road that wound through a hayfield—just walking through, talking as we went. At first the butterflies were so tiny that we didn’t really notice them. But then they were…

In areas where even a light controlled burn can be dangerous to surrounding communities, forestry officials at the Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area in west-central Massachusetts is one of the…

One day I looked out my kitchen window and noticed two birds I had never seen before, digging in the gravel on my driveway, They were larger than the juncos that hunt for seeds among the driveway…

Any reader might well ask, on first hefting this 586-page book, “Isn’t it too long?” This reader’s answer is an unqualified “No.” I can’t claim I read it in…