Magazine Series

Chances are you remember where you were when you saw your first bobcat. Maybe the moment seemed haunted, the cat little more than a ghostly flash of cinnamon and yellow in a spruce thicket,…

In her 1905 book, Our Native Trees and How to Identify Them: A Popular Study of Their Habits and Their Peculiarities, Harriet Keeler extols the unexpected qualities of the inner bark of…

It’s not unusual for landowners in this part of the world to find themselves on one side of a wet area with a need to get to the other side. This can be a vexing problem. Boggy areas often…

The black-capped chickadee may be the perfect songbird. It is vocal and approachable, inquisitive and dependable. Even the casual birdwatcher finds in the chickadee a neighbor, a friend, an…

Melissa Fierke’s journey to becoming assistant professor of forest entomology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, began when the former loan officer…

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there and I am prepared to expect wonders. —Henry…

Silk-spinning spiders have been around for roughly 400 million years, and they’ve made good use of their time. Today, they occupy just about every habitable region of the Earth. Scientists…

“There is but one tree in the pasture,and [the cows] are all collected and now reposing in its shade… It shows the importance of leaving trees for shade in the pastures as well as…

In southern Appalachia, they still call brook trout the “hemlock trout” because they’re mainly found in the cold water and deep shade of the hemlock forest. These spectacularly colorful…

Sugarmakers begin drilling holes and hammering spouts into their maple trees at their own discretion, and each has particular schedules and reasons for tapping when they do. Still, the…