These two Vermont trees are growing just a few feet apart. Can you tell us what species each is?

Harvard Forest released a report last week that’s been grabbing headlines – you can read it here. The big news is that between 1990 and 2010, New England lost 24,000 acres of forest each…

In your September photos, sunlight performs captivating tricks: making rainbows appear in the mist, brightening leaves in the understory, and pulling an afternoon shadow across a well-organized log…

In New England, the edge of autumn feels like no other time of year. The cool nights and warm afternoons call mid-May to mind, but the dawn woods are quiet and splashed with yellow and red. As the…

If you have much to do with firewood, and if you have retained your amateur standing, you will eventually become acquainted with a certain principle – a bitter, rue-laden principle that might be…

On a hike this spring, we walked through a clear-cut area with tall grass and brambles. Afterwards, our pant legs were crawling with black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis), also known as deer ticks,…

Jeannette Segale came across this yellow substance in early August in her back woods in Huntington, Vermont. Do you know what it is?

We’ve been rebuilding a major section of one of our sugarbushes this summer with the idea that this time we’re going to do it right. We first started building this particular bush in the…

For years, as a committed insect ecologist, I resisted student requests to work on mammals. My objections included bite risk, rabies shots, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee forms and…

The first time I saw nighthawks migrating through downtown Keene, I acted like a complete lunatic. Dozens of the slender birds were gliding down Main Street, some as low as the first-story marquee on…

Kakabeka, northwestern Ontario 48°23’45.7” N, 89°37’17.2” W I stand on a stony bluff overlooking a valley filled with the textures and hues of northern forests: blue…

I once heard of a biologist with a clever party trick: regardless of where or when a given party was taking place, he claimed that he could produce a wild salamander in 15 minutes or less, and more…

“Wait, what in the world is that?” In art, as in nature, the familiar attracts us. We feel a certain security in being able to recognize and identify things. We can breathe a sign of…

Does your back hurt from bending over to buck firewood on the ground? Can you admit that occasionally you cut too far and run your newly filed chain into the dirt? Do you spend too long bucking…

Walking a field at the edge of Lake Memphremagog one fall evening, photographer Bob M. Montgomery found that the angle of the setting sun offered up some silhouette opportunities. “As I settled…

In one of the longest-running studies of its kind in North America, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies has documented a 14.2-percent decrease in Vermont forest birds over the past 25 years. While not…

Hemlock wooly adelgid, the invasive insect from Japan that is wiping out most of the hemlock forests in the eastern United States, is also having a significant effect on the availability of surface…

This plant was observed in thickets in the Champlain Valley of Vermont. What is it?

Some months, like some people, have a very strong sense of who and what they are. May is spring. July and August are summer. October is fall. January, February are winter. If these months had a hair…

In the words of Sarah Orne Jewett, late summer is a time when “the spirit of autumn takes a first stealthy flight, like a spy, through the ripening countryside.”  Your August photos…