Nine years ago, I set up my first wildlife camera next to an active beaver pond on a conservation property a mile from my house. On the advice of an ecologist friend, I waited three weeks to return to…

This March (shortly after this issue of the magazine arrives in mailboxes), the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine (PLC), a trade association, will publish its third study on the economic…

Burning bush (Euonymus alatus), native to East Asia, first arrived in the eastern United States in the late 1800s. It’s an attractive plant, with corky, winged green stems and opposite leaves…

During my wanders through the woods, I’m always looking for animal tracks and other signs. The bare ground of spring provides a broad canvas for tracks, and good conditions for creating plaster…

Why do ants suddenly appear every time spring is near? Just like bees, they long to be close to you – especially if your home is made of wood. Carpenter ants (genus Camponotus) and the eastern…

This Week in the Woods, light green patches of ramps (wild leeks) have appeared in hardwood forests. We most often find them growing in nutrient rich, moist soils along forest streams. Ramps are easy…

Robert Frost, who lived for a time just down the road from where I live now, liked to wander the backroads and wilder places and “botanize.” Although the landscape has changed a bit from…

Celebrated in the fall for their vibrant foliage, red maple trees (Acer rubrum) produce equally vibrant reds and yellows in early spring when they are flowering. Most red maples have dense clusters of…

On the Martin Family Tree Farm in Bridgewater, New Hampshire, around the time the hardwoods begin leafing out and the bluebirds return to their nesting boxes, the frog chorus begins. On a spring…

Call it a flower or call it a weed – clover is a plant everyone knows. Who hasn’t idled away an hour hunting for a four-leaf clover, hoping for good luck? A member of the legume family,…

This Week in the Woods, American kestrels are feeling flirty and should be laying eggs soon, if they’re not already. This photo shows a dinner date in progress. The female is perched on the…

We spotted these spring leaves emerging from the leaf litter beneath an apple tree in northern New Hampshire. What plant do they belong to?

Like many Vermonters, Hayden Lake spent a lot of time in the woods while he was growing up. Those experiences eventually led to a career as a consulting forester. Last year he took a break from work…

Frequent themes in your March photos included maple sugaring, vividly colored winter skies, and the return of blue herons. Tim Larsen captured an encounter between a barred owl and an exceptionally…

Years ago, when I worked at a nature center in Connecticut licensed to care for injured and orphaned wildlife, a baby opossum was brought to us. It was found lying on a golf course, and was too young…

This Week in the Woods, skunk cabbages seem to have gotten a later start this year than last, but we found a patch of them in a local wetlands, with their bright crimson spathes just beginning to…

I’m often tempted to peek at the eggs inside a phoebe’s nest when the parents leave it to forage for food. I’ve picked up a fallen robin’s egg shell and admired its delicate…

What a difference a few days makes! This week in the woods, we’ve been hearing new birdsongs, including the impressively loud, fast notes of winter wrens. As noted in this recent Outside Story…

While out walking in a wetland in Lyme, New Hampshire, we found a whole thicket of...pinecone bearing hardwood shrubs?!? What is going on in this photo?

Joe and Lisa McSwain are of an age when they might think of retiring, but a life of leisure doesn’t appeal to them. A few years ago, they sold the steeplejack company they’d run for about…