If winter travels take you along the banks of a clean, rocky stream on a warm afternoon, chances are good you’ll encounter stoneflies (order Plecoptera) seeking out others of their kind by…

Intolerance of disturbance, specific habitat requirements, and narrow distribution: these are characteristics that threaten species with extinction. Unfortunately, the Chittenango ovate amber snail…

Bumble bees are culturally iconic and essential to our environment. While unwittingly inspiring classical music, soft toys, and jewelry, bumble bees pollinate flowers both obscure and important to…

There’s a fantastic song by folk singer Colm Gallagher called “Reel in the Flickering Light” about a daddy long legs who, after first making inquiries about the singer’s…

While pursuing iNaturalist records of insects in the Saint Michael's College Natural Area, I noticed a species I had never encountered, and it was recorded at an unusual time of the year for…

While hiking with my son on Snake Mountain in Addison County, Vermont, I noticed a rather impressive millipede on the trail. When I think “millipede,” I usually think about small,…

Picture this: you are a single mother, and to ensure the success of your children, you’ll have to immobilize a still-living animal almost twice your weight and haul it back to a tunnel you dug…

My students and I have pit-trapped invertebrates in Camp Johnson in Colchester, Vermont, annually since 2006. We sink liquid-filled plastic tubes into the ground to intercept forest-floor…

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…

For focus, exercise, and pleasant distraction, scientist Declan McCabe takes frequent walks along Vermont's Winooski River. The brief trips provide solitude, grounding, and an opportunity to…

While walking through the woods in northern New Hampshire this past week, we spotted several areas where it looked like someone had spilled ground pepper on the snow. What’s happening here?

Demery Coppola of Guilford, Connecticut, found this leaf on the Saint Michael's College campus in Vermont during her Environmental Science lab. Do you know what’s on its underside?

This week in the woods, we discovered (via a remote camera trap) a Virginia opossum trundling back and forth from a derelict shed. On each return trip, it was carrying leaves with its tail. And yes…

When I was about age 10, Mrs. Garvey assigned an essay to read on opossums. Never mind that we lived 3,000 miles from the nearest actual opossum; I was 10 and one did not question the logic of the…

I have yet to hear of any snowy owls nearby this winter, although they’re on the move in the Northeast; Cornell’s eBird site includes recent sightings along the New England coast, in the…

This week in the woods, the landscape shows its skeleton, and we can see the true ridgeline beneath the now-leafless hardwoods. Also more apparent during the beginning of this bare month are goldenrod…

This week in the woods, Editor Meghan McCarthy McPhaul encountered this garter snake making its way across a field, perhaps on its way to winter lodging. The snakes typically move into hibernacula…

This week in the woods, one of our most exciting finds was, by design, not very exciting to look at. This is a well-hidden active barred owl nest, a status we realized a few seconds after taking this…

Writers in the Woods, a companion series to our Community Voices interviews, focuses on authors and artists whose work relates to the forests of the Northeast. For the first interview in the series,…

This past weekend, Northern Woodlands held its 4th annual conference, a gathering of over 140 writers, editors, readers, foresters, educators, artists, scientists, naturalists, and others who share a…