A number of years ago, when I was working in a New Hampshire mountain hut, a man walked in from the rain and saw a piece of paper thumb-tacked to the wall with the day’s weather forecast on it.…

The beat changed more, and now they flew striking all together, so that their wings sung in unison as they went over his head. He stood stock still watching them, and long after they had passed down…

To fell trees accurately and safely, you need to know how to do a bore cut, sometimes known as a plunge cut. On trees with forward lean, the traditional “race to the hinge” backcut will…

It is a monumental decision in the life of any birdwatcher. At stake is nothing less than the pleasure you get in the company of birds. So here is some advice on buying and using binoculars. First,…

Biologists monitor the vitality of the “living symbol of the Maine woods.” The past two days have been disappointing for state bear biologists, and today is shaping up no differently.…

Dick Lewis, of Chester, New Hampshire, has been logging since he was a teenager in the late 1950s. He started with horses and then a farm tractor, each of them pulling a scoot, a rugged sled that kept…

Significant powerline projects are in the works throughout northern New England and New York, as the grid is updated to accommodate more power from Quebec. In the pages of the local papers, residents…

It’s a still, misty afternoon in Westminster, Vermont, and low-angled sun rays are piercing the water droplets, making everything seem preternaturally bright. Tom Wessels pulls on his boots in…

October 14, 2009. Jim Block captured the transition from autumn to winter from the fire tower atop Smarts Mountain in Lyme, New Hampshire.  

Even those who say they don’t know the first thing about trees are likely to appreciate the fact that giant trees emerge from tiny seeds. Really, what sort of grump doesn’t smile at the…

In 2010, the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences conducted a study for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to examine the greenhouse gas implications of using woody biomass for energy.…

I took a kid fishing recently. A friend’s kid – a ten-year-old boy who didn’t grow up rural. We cast rooster tails and panther martins into a tea-colored lake that sat up on the…

The shock of crimson from a red maple growing at the edge of a wetland, the spying of a kettle of broadwings flying south, the evocative sound of a katydid suggesting that a return to school is…

If you’ve done any traveling around New York or New England this summer, you’ve probably come across one of the purple emerald ash borer traps that are hanging from ash trees along…

Some trees continue to "flower" throughout the summer – like this one. What kind of tree produced this "flower?"

It appears that Sadie Hawkins Day has made its way into the butterfly world. Or, more likely, the sex role reversal when women ask men out for a date got its start with insects and only recently…

While it has long been known that plants absorb carbon dioxide for use in photosynthesis, a new study has found that plants play a larger role than previously thought in absorbing certain types of air…

When Mark Urban noticed that some vernal pools contained an abundance of certain salamanders but the same species was scarce or absent in other nearby pools, he wondered why. What the University of…

No one has been bitten by a rattlesnake in Vermont in over 50 years. But that streak ended last year when a man in Fair Haven was struck between the thumb and index finger by a snake as he was…

While controversy rages over the reinstated killing of wolves in western states, these predators may be making a quiet comeback in the northeast, slipping across the border from Canada. And the notion…