While I was photographing pollinators on a patch of meadow near a bike path, a bumblebee caught my attention. It appeared to have an enormous, clubbed antenna, as well as a normal-size one.…

While I was searching the drawers of the Saint Michael’s College insect collection, a spectacular little beetle caught my eye. The pearlescent elytra, or wing coverings, were marked with…

On a late winter afternoon in 1994, I accompanied Professor Jan Sykora, my thesis advisor, on a field trip to the Carnegie Museum’s Powdermill Nature Reserve in Pennsylvania’s…

There’s a fantastic song by folk singer Colm Gallagher called “Reel in the Flickering Light” about a daddy long legs who, after first making inquiries about the…

While hiking with my son on Snake Mountain in Addison County, Vermont, I noticed a rather impressive millipede on the trail. When I think “millipede,” I usually think about small,…

Each spring, as melting snow liberates the forest floor, I seek out wildflowers. I flip through Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, counting petals and leaves to tell hepaticas apart and to sort…

While pursuing iNaturalist records of insects in the Saint Michael's College Natural Area, I noticed a species I had never encountered, and it was recorded at an unusual time of the year…