This Week in the Woods, we asked Jason Berard, vice president of stewardship at Upper Valley Land Trust, to take photos for this blog. He graciously agreed to help us, and shared more cool plant…

This fledgling bird was found in an old apple orchard covered with grape vines and bordered by forest, about 660 feet above sea level, on June 24th. What species is it?

Linda Gibbs is the community programs director for the Tug Hill Tomorrow Land Trust and has worked as an environmental educator and natural resources specialist since the 1980s. She grew up near…

Birds featured in many of your June photos. Don Wharton welcomed a visit from a famous white robin and Geoffrey Bluh documented the happy resolution of a perilous woodcock chick crossing, thanks to…

One summer day, I was relaxing on the bank of a secluded pond watching mallard ducks forage when a dark shape broke the stillness of the water. It was a North American river otter, swimming with its…

This Week in the Woods, some young fawns of white-tailed deer are still tucked in their hiding places, although earlier-born ones have started feeding on plants and may be easier to see. As Susan Shea…

Walking down my road on an early June afternoon several years ago, I spotted a snake attempting to cross into the underbrush. Covered in colorful splotches, it quickly slithered across the pavement…

This Week in the Woods, we’re giving a special shout out to the Thurston family, who jumped into action to rescue raccoon kits after their mother was hit by a car. After a cross-Vermont road…

A reader in Stony Creek, New York, submitted this photo of a bubbly substance at the base of a yellow birch. What’s brewing here?

Bill Gould grew up in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, started working in the woods as a teenager, and has been a logger, sawyer, basket maker, and now birchbark canoe maker. Since 1980, he and his wife,…

In 1860, a year after publication of his seminal work on the origin of species, Charles Darwin wrote to a friend, “At the moment, I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in…

This Week in the Woods we discovered a black bear dozing on a rock at the edge of a field. He (or she?) seemed unimpressed by the humans passing at a distance, and after a brief sit-up-and-sniff,…

I never tire of watching the aerial acrobatics of swallows as they swoop over fields, darting back and forth to snap up flying insects. With their smooth, flowing flight and pointed wings, they are…

This Week in the Woods we discovered blue flag irises blooming by a forested pond, attended by a number of small butterflies. As Laurie Morrisey notes in this recent Outside Story essay, blue flag is…

In May, you often turned your lenses on owls. Fuzzy barred fledglings peered down at Gary Campbell from a tree, while Kirk Gentalen investigated the grisly remains of a saw-whet’s past meals.…

Reader Tammis Coffin found this colorful tube (and several others like it) on the ground last month at Bartholomew’s Cobble in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Is it a fairy’s trumpet? Nope. What is it?

Sally Naser is the director of conservation restriction (a.k.a. easement) stewardship for The Trustees of Reservations, in Massachusetts. She’s also worked for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy…

This Week in the Woods, we visited our favorite pink lady’s slipper patch and discovered a couple of beautiful beetles crawling on the blossoms. Analeptura lineola, sometimes called the flower…

Picture a robin, out in the morning and hopping around the park. It finds breakfast in the form of a worm, but out of the nearby trees swoops a bigger bird. The bigger bird acts threatening, and the…

By Clare Walker Leslie “After writing twelve books over a period of forty years, I said I was finished. However, my life and the life around me has changed and I felt it time to offer to people…