One of my hobbies this time of year is to try to pinpoint the day that I can say that the leaves are out and spring has arrived. Usually it’s sometime in the second week of May, though it seems…

Dinosaur tooth? Probably not, but love the hot pink. What is this?

The word senescence, a fancy term that biologists use to refer to the process of growing old, has recently entered my vocabulary, and judging by the steady rate at which my nose hair has accumulated…

The old saw about “an apple a day” as the way to perfect health may have been overstated, but the apple is a great food and a nutritional bonanza. A medium-sized apple has anywhere from…

The widespread decline of both wild and managed bee populations has raised alarms for more than a decade due to the importance of bees as pollinators of both agricultural crops and wild plants.…

Inventories often report that forested lands across the U.S. and elsewhere are declining, but those studies simply look at the total deforested area. A new analysis of forests in the lower 48 found…

When a stand of trees is blown down in a storm, the typical practice is to salvage as many saleable trees as possible. But a 20- year study in the Harvard Forest found that if you are just…

Spring is on our doorstep, and so are the ants. Seeking the open sugar bowl or the drops of maple syrup left on the kitchen counter, they’re a sure sign that winter has finally drifted away.…

Trout season opened recently in most of the Northeast, and in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d share a fishing story in this week’s blog that I wrote in 2006. Good luck to all you…

Northern Woodlands’ columnist Bryan Pfeiffer pulled this branch out of the water for a closer look. What are those whitish bumps? (Photo by Bryan Pfeiffer.)

Not long ago, as the ice went out on my local brook, I came across some fresh beaver cuttings and a scent-mound in an area that showed sign of having been dammed before. Did the fresh sign indicate…

A distant motor thud-thud-thuds as if trying to start, then dies away. The noise repeats, and again dies off. I’ve been fooled by this sound, wondering who could be trying to start a 2-cylinder…

Like house designers everywhere, James “B’fer” Roth starts with the building site. Though unlike most, it’s not the soil or topography that he studies first. He looks for the…

Last fall, I went to a nearby wetland with a pair of clippers and cut twigs from one willow shrub after another. It wasn’t hard to tell the willows from the non-willows because willows are the…

We found this odd-looking plant growing on a moss-covered boulder in a Vermont sugarbush. What is it?

This year, when Moderator Ann Wilson raps her gavel, calling the Craftsbury Town Meeting to order in the new Craftsbury Academy Gymnasium, she’ll be standing on a forest of local trees hewn…

The eastern white pine is the tallest tree in this part of North America, with the biggest specimens getting up near 200 feet. They can live for 250 years or more. A truly big one is jaw-droppingly…

Editor’s note: Last winter, the Vermont Woodlands Association partnered with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation and Northern Woodlands to sponsor an essay contest for…

When David Weiss obtains a canister of old movie film, he gives it the sniff test. “I pry off the lid, sniff it, and if it doesn’t knock me over with the smell of vinegar, it’s…

Postal workers have postal routes; milk truck drivers have milk routes. But a maple route? Last spring, The Wild Center, a nonprofit environmental education organization and natural history museum in…