This young Virginia opossum was skulking around the bushes near a house at night, as opossums often do. Despite sometimes being mistaken for large rats, they aren’t closely related to…

Twenty-five years ago, a student brought me a dead, tattered specimen of a moth. Its prodigious wingspan, colorfully banded fuzzy body, and spectacular wings were unmistakable: cecropia moths…

This Week in the Woods, spring has finally arrived. Volunteers are on standby, monitoring temperatures and nighttime rain forecasts, to predict when spotted salamanders, wood frogs and other…

During our first autumn in Westford, Vermont, a wave of ladybugs attempted to make our home theirs for the winter. My wife expressed concern that our toddler might eat one. I replied,…

Approximately 50 people contribute to the words and images in each issue of the magazine. Here are some of our Spring 2023 contributors. {image2} Conrad Baker (“Autism Nature…

If you get a chance this winter, take a peek through the icy window of a pond surface. You may see water boatmen (order Hemiptera: Family Corixidae) clinging to the pond floor. Long oar-like…

Winter rambles often take me to East Woods in South Burlington, Vermont. While birders gaze skyward, I find myself drawn to movement on the ground. Snow cover reduces invertebrate numbers, and…

Roger Damon served more than 48 years on the Mount Washington Volunteer Ski Patrol, but he didn’t know that we would be publishing a photo essay in this issue focused on the Mount…

A student plopped a leaf on my desk, pointed to several green lumps on its underside, and asked, “What are those green growths?” It was a stump-the-professor moment, and in this…

If you look beneath the damp undersides of cardboard and other packing materials, you’re likely to find tiny creatures that typically hide under fallen leaves and rotting wood, where…

In September 2021, one boy’s blue ribbon-winning 4H project at the Kansas State Fair made national news. The exhibit included a colorfully-spotted, inch-long, moth-like insect that…

While I was photographing pollinators on a patch of meadow near a bike path, a bumblebee caught my attention. It appeared to have an enormous, clubbed antenna, as well as a normal-size one.…

Earlier this summer, I joined graduate school friend and beetle biologist, Kristian Omland, in search of the elusive cobblestone tiger beetle (Cicindela marginipennis). We loaded a canoe with…

Phantom midges are among the most common, but least seen, planktonic insect larvae in lakes and ponds. These members of the genus Chaoborus earn the “phantom” moniker from both…

I have a pre-pandemic memory of a dozen high school students – armed with dipnets and wearing chest waders – emerging from a Saint Michael’s College van. Before masks and…

While I was searching the drawers of the Saint Michael’s College insect collection, a spectacular little beetle caught my eye. The pearlescent elytra, or wing coverings, were marked with…

Earlier this winter, I took to the pond ice – not to skate, but to peek below the surface. Although lake ecologists once considered the plankton in frozen lakes to be dormant during…

I was settling in to answer a few emails when I heard, “Dad, some huge bug just flew into the lamp shade!” As the designated bug catch-and-releaser, I pressed into action. A…

On a late winter afternoon in 1994, I accompanied Professor Jan Sykora, my thesis advisor, on a field trip to the Carnegie Museum’s Powdermill Nature Reserve in Pennsylvania’s…

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…