Peter Pfeiffer has been working in the Maine woods with a chainsaw since 1974, often on his 113-acre woodlot in Solon, where he lives off the grid, relying on solar and wind power for electricity.…

In a February forest, evergreens provide welcome color. But look more closely on the bark of trees, both conifers and hardwoods, and you’ll find other bright hues, from sunny yellows to…

This Week in the Woods, Northern Woodland’s assistant editor Meghan McCarthy McPhaul was “just skiing through the woods, lost in my thoughts, when a grouse burst out of the snow less than…

As an enthusiastic pedestrian, I was immediately drawn to the subtitle for Reservoir Year: A Walker’s Book of Days. I liked the premise, too: deliberately walk every day at the same place for a…

It seems apt – or perhaps ironic – that Aldo Leopold’s classic environmental tome was reissued this year in honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. I finished reading A Sand…

“More than any other living thing, trees define their surroundings,” Zach St. George writes in the opening of The Journeys of Trees: A Story About Forests, People, and the Future.…

Last summer I regularly passed a stand of towering white pine trees at Camp Plymouth State Park in Ludlow, Vermont, where I live and work. Most days I saw at least one hairy woodpecker, a few blue…

This Week in the Woods we watched a nuthatch seem to defy gravity while gleaning bugs upside-down, on the underside of an almost-horizontal branch, and it occurred to us that strong claws and a…

Reader Tammis Coffin sent in this photo of a somewhat hairy thing tucked into the crevice of a beech tree in western Massachusetts. What is it?

Your January photos included beautiful landscape and sky scenes, birds in snow, and people (plus Dahlia the Corgi) outside enjoying winter recreation. Lonnie Jandreau encountered a snowy-snooted fox,…

Sebastian Moreno has always been interested in nature, but it wasn’t until near the end of his undergraduate studies that he realized wildlife was something he could not only study, but build a…

This Week in the Woods we’ve reached the middle of winter (according to Farmer’s Almanac, the exact midway point occurs on Wednesday, February 3 at 4:49 p.m.), and over the weekend, we…

A woodpecker frequently visits our feeder, alighting on the wooden supporting post and hopping up the post to the suet. Its medium size and striking markings – black wings spotted with white, a…

This Week in the Woods, and more specifically this past sunny Saturday, we noticed how the new snow in the fields glittered. As Meghan McCarthy McPhaul notes in this Outside Story essay, 5 to 15…

I consider the lack of biting insects and other invertebrates, to be a wondrous gift of the winter season. I can wander unmolested through wood and field absent the attentions of mosquitoes, deer…

In your second gallery of December images, Peter Hollinger took a stunning macro shot of a snowflake, Tami Gingrich sought out short-eared owls, and Eric D’Aleo applied the cloud gazing game to…

What caused the horizontal split in this maple tree?

On frigid winter evenings, the hooting of a barred owl (Strix varia) serves as a reminder that the darkened forests of the Northeast are still very much alive with activity. Their nocturnal calling…

This Week in the Woods, Meghan McCarthy McPhaul found tracks along a frozen brook. They were clearly made by a mustelid (member of the weasel family), but which species? Sliding marks and a water hole…

A resident of Boston’s South End, Carolyn Lowell is a former high school math teacher now working toward a master’s degree in architecture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.…