On a picture-perfect winter morning last year, 20 Saint Michael’s College students and I visited Vermont Fish and Wildlife scientists for ice fishing at Knight’s Point on Lake Champlain.…

This Week in the Woods more warblers are returning, including this black-and-white warbler, which obligingly posed for a photo behind the Northern Woodlands office. Black-and-white warblers are…

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 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 immediately…

Gutter pipes full of soggy peat show up on the bench by my office each March.  This means one thing: my colleague Peter Hope’s Saint Michael’s College students are about to experience…

A good friend was in touch; her son was enduring allergic reactions to mosquitoes and, like any good parent, she sought solutions. I told her that the most practical, non-toxic way to deal with the…

In May of this year, when a cottonwood measuring nearly 3 ½ feet in diameter and more than 100 feet tall fell across a trail in the Saint Michael’s College Natural Area, I saw the event…

The sharpest contrast between rivers and lakes is in water movement. While rivers flow inexorably downhill, lake water movement is more subtle. Anyone who has weathered a storm on a lake, however, can…

When my sisters visit from Ireland, I try to play tour guide, but I’m occasionally at a loss for what to do next. During a visit in the late 1990s, my sister Grace said she would love to see a…

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 social…

Jim Fuller, a former park ranger at Vermont’s Grand Isle State Park, described this interaction with a tourist from New Jersey, when he confiscated their out-of-state firewood. Ranger Jim: "We…

Large fishing spiders walking on water can be fascinating – or terrifyingly unnerving. The latter reaction is common among Saint Michael's College students as we sample Vermont’s…

Eastern cottontail rabbits are frequently described as crepuscular, meaning active at dawn and dusk. The Virtual Nature Trail at Penn State New Kensington, an online site documenting various plant and…

My three children have participated in a Four Winds Nature Institute program that recruits adult family members to lead grade-school nature learning. I have worked with several moms and dads over the…

Occasionally I get an email from a camp, school, or even my local Rotary asking if I can present an insect program. So it was not unusual last week for me to be handing insect nets to excited Cub…

Clouds of tiny insects, rising and falling hypnotically along lake shores, contribute to the ambiance of warm summer evenings. My recent bike ride was interrupted by a lungful of this ambiance. If you…

This week in the woods, this dark fishing spider fell out of a wood pile and onto a piece of target-practice paper. Our area’s other fishing spider species appear near permanent bodies of water,…

An email chirped in my inbox; “Check out the cute face on this insect we found.” I opened the attachment (yes, from a reliable source). My colleague Professor Peter Hope had taken a…

One spring, following heavy rain, I visited the Saint Michael’s College Natural Area hoping to capture exciting photographs of the rushing Winooski River. Rather than raging floodwaters,…

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 insect…