Reader Dick Pearson submitted this picture of two tiny fleur de lis’. What are they? And where did they come from?

If your dog roles in poo or roadkill it doesn’t mean that he’s an idiot. Quite the opposite, actually. It means he’s a team player and a good storyteller. In ancient times, when…

It’s the middle of August, and the heat and humidity have chased me to the relative coolness of Centennial Woods, a 147-acre patch of forest owned by the University of Vermont. There’s not…

If you’re going to get a casual reader interested in a 442-page history of anything, you’d better have an engaging subject matter. Fortunately for Eric Jay Dolin, the fur trade is…

By the time you read this, the annual banquet of fiddleheads may have passed, but a cornucopia of other wild foods, medicines, and materials are available to anyone who cares to discover them. Arthur…

Roger Tory Peterson, a man in need of a big biography, finally has one. At 422 pages, Elizabeth Rosenthal delivers a thorough and masterful account of the man known to friends as the “King…

Few activities in this world are better for the soul than taking a child fishing. Most anglers recall fondly the early days of their youth when that person, be it a parent, grandparent, or family…

Northern Woodlands held its annual board meeting on July 20th. The day’s events included a tour of the Mount Tom Forest at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park, a discussion about…

This skull was found in southern Vermont in a small patch of woods at the edge of a farm field. What kind of animal is it?

Many print-media outlets publish summer book recommendations, and for good reason. Part of the joy of reading is sharing what you’ve read. There’s also a practical component: since blindly…

To be wet on a hot summer day is a glorious thing. On a steamy weekend, you don’t have to go far to find long lines of cars beside the road and people soaking in the river below. One of the…

To birders and meadow-walkers alike, the bubbling, exuberant song of the bobolink is one of summer’s highlights. Singing as it swoops over grasses, this black bird with a yellow cap, white wing…

Our Executive Director found these in his garden. Is this Animal? Or Botanical?

Riverwalking – the act of hiking up a river or stream in the summertime – holds a special place in the rural ethos. It’s as much a part of summer as 4th of July fireworks, or August…

One mid-summer day while out for a walk, I heard a loud buzz and looked up to marvel at a hummingbird moving methodically along the bark of a basswood tree, lapping up sap that oozed from small holes…

The founders of Northern Woodlands magazine, Stephen Long and Virginia Barlow, were recently honored with the 2011 Vermont’s Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence. Long and Barlow…

At first I thought that the bee was attacking me. As I dashed out of our garage, the bee suddenly appeared and hovered before my face in a seeming challenge. It looked like a bumble bee with a white…

Yes, we know it’s a woman. The plant. What’s the plant she’s holding?

It can be hard to summon the appropriate motivation to cut firewood in early July. In light of this, I keep a newspaper article taped to the refrigerator that highlights the billion-dollar quarterly…

In Teale's 1956 book Autumn Across America he refused to see leaf fall as a sad occasion, but bear in mind that he wrote this book as he was travelling across the country, not standing at his…