What happened to this maple tree?

I’ve been trying to explain capitalism and free market economics to a teenager over the past few years, in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, and Bernie Sanders, and the teenager having to get a…

In your July photos, a blue heron took to the air, while a snake settled down for a supersized meal. Independence Day fireworks sparkled above the dark tops of trees, and a loon family went for a…

I always do a second take when I see a killdeer skittering across a northern New Hampshire lawn, more than 100 miles from any ocean. These lanky birds look and move like they belong at the shore,…

In 2013, The New York Times ran a story exposing a Scandinavian controversy that has divided Norwegians (and New Englanders) for eons. The question centered around the proper way to stack firewood.…

To be good at catching fish these days you have to be good at letting fish go. Releasing fish unharmed turns out to be a good way to share a limited resource, and depending on what you hook, it also…

The first red squirrel appeared at about 50 mph. It climbed up over my headrest and landed in my lap. I don’t recall the next few seconds very clearly, but according to my 5-year-old daughter…

Transition zones are attractive to many mammals, so we set this camera trap up on an edge where a stand of spruce met a stand of maple. Over the next few nights we captured images of skunks, fishers,…

We took these photos recently of a tree in full flower, in mid-July, in Vermont. Do you know what kind of tree it is?

By mid-July, the oregano in my herb garden has grown tall and tatty, and I want nothing more than to cut it back into a tidy mound. But I don’t. Doing so would deprive the flurry of common wood…

In The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, biographer Andrea Wulf provides an intimate view of a man who spent a lifetime sharing what he learned with the scientific…

A centennial edition of The Holy Earth was recently published, and it brings back the words of Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954), a remarkable individual whose contributions to the well-being of…

One day last fall I trailed behind Ted Levin when he went to check up on his snakes. The day was so hot that most were out of sight in cool rock recesses, but even now, recalling the sound of their…

Zzz-zzzt. Sitting on my deck on a summer afternoon, I’m often distracted by a hummingbird whizzing by. The tiny bundle of energy hovers in front of a row of jewelweed, probing each pendulous…

Well it’s been a quiet month in my home town, out there in the valley of Vermont. Weather-wise, we’ve seen just about everything but a good soaking rain. There were a few days when it…

What’s on these leaves?

In your June photos, killdeer chicks hatched, young raccoons went on a morning adventure, and...what's that stone circle out in the woods? A squirrel met its end in a Cooper's hawk nest, a…

Unlike the majority of birds, brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) do not start life surrounded by their own kind. The females do not build nests, but instead add their eggs to the clutches of other…

Barry Genzlinger is up at 5 a.m. mixing the formula: one part goat’s milk to one part Fox Valley formula. As he feeds one of the pups tiny drops from a graduated syringe and talks about Izzy,…

Good friend and fellow tracker Paul Rezendes once observed that there are times when a species’ tracks will convince you that you are looking at those of a different animal. So it is with…