Ying Li paints out of doors most of the time, but her work is not what comes to mind when one thinks of “en plein air” painting. Historically, the plein air approach was fundamental to the…

The cricket sang, And set the sun, And workmen finished, one by one, Their seam the day upon. Emily Dickinson No matter where one lives in the Northeast, the song of the cricket serves as both a call…

“I first put my boots on the ground in the Maine Woods in 1965,” explained Roger Merchant. “Like this wood turtle, the going was slow and deliberate.” He photographed the…

The living light of bioluminescent organisms like fireflies, anglerfish, and marine plankton is legendary. The dazzling light shows put on by synchronous fireflies in Great Smoky Mountains National…

This Week in the Woods, the season has tipped toward early autumn, with the first turned leaves lying here and there on the forest floor. Fungi is abundant, including eyelash cup fungi – tiny…

To bee, or not to bee: What is happening in this photograph?

Jason Berard grew up in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. He and his wife moved from Boston to the Upper Valley two decades ago and have raised their three children – all now teenagers –…

Last July, Rich Kelley posted a most unusual photograph to the Vermont Birding Facebook group with the caption, “Someone bit off more than he could chew.” The photo, taken in the…

This Week in the Woods, we’ve noticed bright green lungwort lichen, which grows on the trunks of both conifers and hardwoods. Because of its lettuce-like appearance, it’s easy to mistake…

A quarter-century after the publication of their landmark book The Northern Forest, two writers return to a changed landscape - and find hope in a conservationist committed to local solutions. As…

Climate change is bringing warmer and wetter conditions to the Northeast, with many implications for the forest products industry. An unpredictable winter season requires flexibility, and forest…

I’ve developed an intermittent habit of gathering birdsong in the morning. It began on holiday visits to my childhood home in western Massachusetts after I moved to Maine in 1998. The early…

Animal sign is all around. Nipped vegetation, chewed bark, animal runs and burrows. Are you in a field, spruce, hemlock, hardwood forest? It’s a whole universe out there, and you can never learn…

In the Second Gallery for July, the Rodent-Chicken Mutual Appreciation Society held its summer meeting in Danville, Vermont. Lucy the Moose enjoyed an early breakfast in Alstead, New Hampshire, and up…

Recently I saw a beautiful orange butterfly speckled with black – a great spangled fritillary – feeding on orange hawkweed in a meadow. I observed it through binoculars, so as not to scare…

This Week in the Woods we’ve been noticing leaf rolls on sugar maples and other hardwood tree species – single leaves that are wrapped up tightly like rolled cigars. These are often the…

Kelly Stettner, director of the Black River Action Team sent in this photo of a 6-foot-long something in the water of Muckross Pond in Springfield, Vermont. What is it?

Lucienne Nicholson is many things: a mother, an immigrant, a hiker, an enthusiastic gardener, a beach lover, and a wholehearted admirer of nature and its power to heal. She is also the founder of…

You submitted an abundance of photos for our July photo gallery – and even after limiting our selections to forest-related images (sorry, garden flowers and sea birds!) we still had too many…

I first became acquainted with my neighborhood red-bellied woodpecker (​Melanerpes carolinus) when it visited my bird feeders last winter. Sporting a black-and-white-striped back with a red…