A small brown object dropped as I swung open the door to our garage loft.  Before I could process what I had glimpsed, the thing unfurled black, umbrella-like wings, swooped to the wall and clung…

Henry David Thoreau looms over us from the depths of history, a towering person, important we’re told, a giant of his age, yet vaguely threatening, unpleasantly Puritanical, and more than a…

Depending on the time of year, the seeds from this plant can be green or red. What in the woods is it?

On calendars and on magazine covers, autumn is usually rendered glossy and exhilarating: the foliage always neon orange against azure skies, humans and their fall chores the cheerful equivalent of…

Each fall I spend quiet time in the woods getting reacquainted with – yes, you guessed it – Paraclemensia acerifoliella. OK, I admit you may not know Paraclemensia acerifoliella. But if…

A considerable amount of research has been conducted about the impact of timber management on bird habitat, but few if any scientific studies have examined how management for non-timber forest…

No, it’s not an alien life-form; and that’s all the help I’m giving you. What in the woods is it?

If we could afford to do it, we’d make the Letters to the Editor section of the magazine 20 pages long. Our readers are the lifeblood of our publication, and their thoughts add depth and breadth…

Ferns reward a close look. Their beauty is easy to appreciate from afar – the way a bed of ferns catches the sunlight filtering down among the trees, splashing bright green on the forest floor,…

Dave Anderson was hiking along a telephone line right-of-way near Long Pond in Lempster, New Hampshire, when he noticed a telephone pole that was completely snapped off and was hanging suspended from…

Three hundred million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the land. The earth they inhabited was hot and humid and covered in vast, swampy forests that today would seem most bizarre. Some of the plants…

An Atlas of the Connecticut River Watershed in Vermont and New Hampshire The Connecticut River divides and connects the Twin States yet borders the less-populated side of both. As a result, the…

Managing Editor Dave Mance is on vacation this week, so I hijacked his blog . . . -Lora Nielsen, Administrative Coordinator Our dog Ruby was a 9-year-old speckled black and white Dalmatian mix with a…

This maple leaf seems covered with Nerds candy. A quick taste reveals the bumps in question are anything but sweet. What in the woods is it?

When we moved to Thetford, Vt., in 1985, I marveled at the variety of forest songbirds in our midst. I counted as many as 26 species a year just in our backyard. Of all these, the most thrilling was…

When the first week of November rolls around, drivers are more apt to notice dead deer along the sides of highways. You may have heard that hunting is the cause – that hunters scare deer from…

The trail up Burnt Rock Mountain in north-central Vermont is a consistently rugged scramble up exposed granite ledge, the kind that makes ribbons out of hiking boots. J and I summited around 1 p.m.…

This curious-looking insect rests on a black-eyed Susan. What kind of bug is it? Common name is fine.

What do your computer and a peregrine falcon have in common? For most of us in rural New England, it isn’t speed. Rather it is polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), a group of chemicals used as…

On our Mill Prices page in the Summer 2009 issue, we presented a chart showing the sawlog value of red maple versus sugar maple. Our caption suggested that the dollar amounts on the left-hand axis…