Strange impressions. What made these tracks in the woods?

Alicia Brunner grew up in Wisconsin and spent much of her childhood outside, canoeing and four-wheeling with her family and playing in the backyard. From a young age, she was fascinated by wildlife,…

“Don’t even try it,” my friend said, chuckling and shaking his head slowly. “That’s Gibbs Swamp. People have lost horses in there.” It had been a year since he sold…

This Week in the Woods, the snow’s melting and the March winds roar. Spring is on its way. Out in the wetlands, pussy willow catkins are emerging from their buds. As noted in this Outside Story…

On Valentine’s Day, as I sat down to write, I noticed a burst of blue outside my upstairs window. Looking out with my binoculars, I counted six eastern bluebirds. Clustered on and below my suet…

The bare branches of the trees outside my window seem lifeless in late winter. However, each twig holds many buds – small, wrapped packages of potential awaiting the spring. These buds formed…

This Week in the Woods, we’re seeing more dripping icicles and openings in frozen streams and rivers. The spring melt has begun. This seasonal change has profound impacts on aquatic life, both…

Your February photos showed vivid sunrises and sunsets, unusual ice formations, and people outside enjoying the snow. Kit Hood captured an image of a vivid blue-and-purple ice seep, and Gordon Gould…

Northern Woodlands reader Pat Liddle took this photograph on her property in Canaan, New York. The linear impressions in the snow on the left side of the photo had this experienced wildlife tracker…

Zac Freeman grew up roaming the woods of central Vermont by bike and ski. After a post-high school stint in Utah and Colorado, he returned home to Braintree and worked with his parents as a jeweler in…

They may look like large puddles, but vernal pools teem with life. Among the most dynamic wetlands to explore in the spring woods, they provide critical breeding habitat for wood frogs, several…

A decade or so ago I had the opportunity to try out some of the early battery-powered electric chainsaws. I wasn’t impressed. They were heavy, underpowered, and had a pitifully short battery…

On a clear mid-winter day several years ago, my student Sarah Wakefield and I pulled on snowshoes, donned backpacks, and headed up through Smuggler’s Notch. Our destination was Big Spring, which…

The traditional springtime harvest of fiddleheads – the furled fronds of the ostrich fern – may be in jeopardy in areas where too many are plucked from the same plants in a season.…

My work as a field ecologist has taken me to some rugged and remote places. I’ve kayaked lakes and rivers, trekked through hot, mosquito-infested wetlands, and spent entire seasons above tree…

A cloud of reddish dust rose behind our car as we drove down a series of dirt U.S. Forest Service roads southeast of Williams, Arizona. It was September 2019, and we were headed for a hike at Sycamore…

Miterwort (Mitella diphylla), also called bishop’s cap, is named for the resemblance of its two-peaked fruits to the hats (known as miters) worn by bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. This…

Depictions of the natural world have existed since prehistoric time. Whether created to record the cyclical rhythm of the year, to express religious devotion, or to document scientific inquiry, the…

A twisting tunnel chewed through dead grass, a line of bounding paw prints in mud, a translucent snakeskin on a sunny rock. Those creatures that have passed this way before me stitch their stories on…

Each spring, as melting snow liberates the forest floor, I seek out wildflowers. I flip through Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, counting petals and leaves to tell hepaticas apart and to sort…