Rain falls on a forested hillside in the mountains of western Maine, 2,000 feet above sea level. Water collects in the narrow valley surrounded by a forest of pine, hemlock, oak, beech, and birch. The…

One spring, following heavy rain, I visited the Saint Michael’s College Natural Area hoping to capture exciting photographs of the rushing Winooski River. Rather than raging floodwaters,…

This Week in the Woods, some red fox kits are venturing out of the den. As Meghan McCarthy McPhaul notes in this Outside Story essay, fox breeding pairs “generally stay together after mating,…

Reader Tammis Coffin spotted this leaf-like form attached to a standing dead tree in western Massachusetts. What is it?

Luke Groff is a herpetologist for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. He and his family moved to Danby in 2019, and although they’re relative newcomers to Vermont, he says they’re…

Many of your March photos showed winter birds, from crossbills to a blizzard of snow geese. John Snell shared a thermal image of skunk cabbage (a plant that gets an early start by generating its own…

This Week in the Woods, we are happy to see that common loons are returning from their coastal winter habitat. At the time the photo was taken, the loon had just resurfaced from under the lake with a…

Erie was perched on a sunny branch when I met her on a cold day in March. She turned her head this way and that to survey her surroundings at the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences (VINS). She is a…

Of This River, Noah Davis’s rich debut poetry collection, centers on a series of poems featuring Short-Haired Girl, a young woman who drowns in the second poem “in the old water / running…

Paint made from stones, charcoal crayons, and animal-fur paintbrushes – The Organic Artist for Kids will tell you how to create and use all of these and more. The book invites kids and adults to…

Around my home, from April to October, phoebes perch in the open, tails pumping, fixtures in the yard. What robins are to the lawn, phoebes are to the pasture fence and apple trees: reliable, seasonal…

This Week in the Woods, sugar maple buds are starting to open in the Upper Valley – a sure sign that sugaring season is coming to an end. Here’s an Outside Story essay by Audrey Clark…

On a warm, rainy April night a few years ago, I drove up our muddy, rutted dirt road through the mist, steering around the wood frogs hopping across the road. As I approached the vernal pool, there…

What made the scratch marks on this maple branch?

Roy Amey grew up on a farm in Pittsburg, New Hampshire’s northernmost town. He learned to work hard at a young age and has spent much of his adult life working in or near the woods. He and his…

At this very moment, nestled into the sediment at the bottom of your nearest lake or pond, are Daphnia eggs – as many as 100,000 per square meter, according to one Michigan study. A genus of…

This Week in the Woods, lakes and rivers have opened up again, and hooded mergansers are back. As Michael Caduto notes in this Outside Story essay, hoodies are short-distance migrants and typically…

Vernal pools, ephemeral wetlands that come to life in early spring with wood frogs, spring peepers, fairy shrimp, and a variety of salamanders, are celebrated by ecologists and woodland explorers of…

When my sisters visit from Ireland, I try to play tour guide, but I’m occasionally at a loss for what to do next. During a visit in the late 1990s, my sister Grace said she would love to see a…

This Week in the Woods, the great spring melt is progressing rapidly. Even on shady, north-facing slopes, you can now see thaw circles – rings of bare ground around the trunks of trees, caused…