I love the fact that there is always something new to observe in nature. Take goldfinches, for example. I have often watched them devour milkweed seeds from an acrobatic, upside-down position.…

Penelope Harris recently came across these on the underside of one of the leaves of a wild pagoda Dogwood on her property in northern Vermont. She knows what they are, do you?

This is more of an iPhone camera tale. I do have a game camera – a Moultrie M-550 – and I use it in somewhat clumsy attempts to glean information about which animals move through the yard…

When people – myself included – write about forestry they tend to focus on the treatments or harvests as though they’re the story. It’s where the action is. But, of course,…

My dog watched intently as an area of soil in our backyard vibrated and formed a slight ridge. Suddenly he began digging, revealing a mole below ground. Before Cody could pounce, I grabbed his collar…

Carla Fenner strode along the railroad tracks outside Burlington, Vermont, on an August afternoon, wearing an orange surveyor’s vest and carrying a large volume entitled New Flora of Vermont, a…

I’ve assessed spotted owl feuds and wolf re-introductions,” said Dr. William Lynn, an environmental ethics professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. “I’ve…

Adventure begins with Matt’s late-spring visit to “the Pit,” a vacant lot at the edge of his neighborhood. Matt notices something he’s never seen before: water is bubbling up…

With catchy rhymes and colorful artwork, author Miranda Paul skillfully weaves the seasonal play of children with water to introduce the water cycle. Water is Water, an award-winning nonfiction…

You may well remember Annie Proulx’s first book, The Shipping News – a bestseller adapted to film, or her story “Brokeback Mountain,” which became an Oscar-winning movie. In…

I was a bit swamped by new, amazing bird information a couple of years ago when I read Bird Sense, an earlier Tim Birkhead book. This new book, The Most Perfect Thing, is just as good, and it’s…

About 25 years ago, I was thrilled to learn that Russian scientists had introduced radioactive material into a tree and found the same material in nearby trees, proving that trees are connected to one…

New Hampshire’s Hubbard Brook Research Forest is a testament to how much can be gained from an enduring commitment to scientific research. Over the past 50 years, hundreds of researchers and…

The North Country lost an iconic writer when Howard Frank Mosher died this past January after a battle with cancer. Mosher wrote 11 novels and dozens of short stories set in Vermont’s Northeast…

Perhaps the phoebe selected her nesting spot during the few days my family was away from home at the end of April. Otherwise, I can’t quite figure her decision to build a nest atop the back…

Chris Wrinn took this photo at Sleeping Giant State Park in Connecticut. She wondered what it was. Do you know?

“Where should I look to find chanterelles?” someone asked the other day. And I said look on rich soil and poor soil, wet sites and dry sites, under hardwoods and under conifers. In other…

Your June photos showed brightly colored pollinators and blossoms. There were also more cryptic woodland wonders, including newborn fawns in hiding, a shy turtle, and a porcupine ascending into the…

Some weighty and persistent questions in the North Woods: Black spruce or red spruce? Green frog or mink frog? Red-eyed vireo or blue-headed vireo? Not that the two vireos look alike. What makes them…

It’s the classic story of unintended consequences. In 1890, Eugene Schieffelin released 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park with the hope of establishing a breeding population. Just in…