Magazine Series

Across great distances they migrate, powered on a diet of arthropods and a blast of determination. When they stop to visit, they are among the most watchable of all wildlife, feeding and…

My early knowledge of sassafras brings to mind the legendary blind men describing an elephant. One man touches the tail, another the flank, another the tusk, and in the end, there’s no…

There was a time when people who lived in rural areas and owned acreage made their living from the land. Subsistence living was neither an alternative lifestyle nor a quaint anachronism. It…

Connecticut forester, logger, and all-around woodskeeper Bob Haines abides by two principles: waste not, want not; and take the time to do it right. Haines has an aura of calm thoughtfulness.…

In the spring of 1780, Jonathan Carpenter and his cousin set out from their home in southern Massachusetts to start a new life in Pomfret, Vermont. On May 13, they bought 100 acres of land,…

Honeybees have been domesticated for millennia, but they don’t always rely on the housing beekeepers provide them in exchange for harvesting their honey. Honeybees remain wild enough to…

In December, 2009, a few days after we published a story in our winter issue about wood industry woes and low mill prices, a logger in northern New England fired up his chainsaw and cut down a…

Photographer Jim Block photographed this blue-gray gnatcatcher in Lebanon, New Hampshire, as the bird was collecting tent caterpillar silk to use for her nest. While the gnatcatcher is a…

Shade tolerance is the relative capacity of tree species to compete for survival under shaded (which is to say, less-than-optimal) conditions. It is a tree trait, a functional adaptation that…

Out-of-control fungi that kill entire populations across a wide geographic area are usually viewed with utter horror: late blight on our garden tomatoes and potatoes and the white-nose…