Site Discussions

Loved this article. Well-written and a great source of info to share with others in these cold months! Thank you!

We have a bumper crop of winterberries on Vinalhaven this year and sumac too.  The birds have ignored my feeder thus far and I wonder if its the abundance of winter fruit.

Very beautifully written article have read for a while. As if I was reading NY times with beautiful metaphors like popcorn. Very insightful that sparrows pair and nest well before other birds arrive.

At our bird feeder in the beginning I hated sparrows because they ate everything and 90 percent were sparrows. After a while I realized that if there are no sparrows at the feeders there are no other birds as well. Figured out that the cardinals, finches, doves, blue jays, nut hatchers were using sparrows as bait. They would calmly wait for sparrows to start eating and if after a while sparrows are safe and still feeding, cardinals and other would flock to the feeder. So sparrows were used as testers by other birds for danger from Cats and Hawks.

Sparrows are what rabbits are in the animal kingdom, the bottom of food chain. They sustain many birds of prey. The hawks and owls would have perished in winter had there not been a good flock of sparrows. We have a resident hawks and owls in our backyard who visit every single day for sparrows.

There is one common capability that nature provides to the bottom food chainers like sparrow, rabbits and mice - they procreate a lot. They help the entire birds of prey .

When I got concerned about the flow slowing down in March after tapping in February, I pulled the tap, reamed the hole with a spade drill and put the tap back.  Conventional, or not, it seemed to help.

We have a hay barn open on one end ,the gable end faces southern exposure.
If bat boxes are on the inside of the metal gable wall will it be warm enough without direct sunlight?

The Canada Holly (winterberry) is a locally plentiful fruit. We have so many this year that the waxwings have not stripped the branches bare yet.

I just read the article on fruit trees for birds in January. My wife and I have 58 acres in the Maine North Woods. This Christmas, we actually had 5 grouse in a crap apple tree by our stream next to the house while the music playing was 12 days of Christmas. Life is good. You have to be out there to find very special moments. Thanks for the great articles.

Yesterday, Jan 18, 2020 I counted at least 3 dozen bluejays literally swarming about, chasing each other. They appeared to be play-fighting at times. They’d briefly land on the naked branches in a row of hardwoods. I observed that many of them dropped off the limbs rather than flew off of them. They freefell within a foot or two of the ground, landed momentarily then quickly flew up. There were 3 “waves” of a dozen or more jays. The whole procession was moving roughly from northeast to northwest. I never saw anything like it before !

Great article! I liked the explanation of different winter conditions and how they benefit and challenge different species.Thanks.

No matter how challenging the weather, chickadees are around the yard, foraging on seeds, caterpillars, and suet.  I love their bold nature, and enjoy seeing them close-up whenever I am able to feed them by hand.  Loved reading your article and learning more about this fearless little bird.  Thank you!

Thank you for this valuable article about woodworking programs in New England schools. The discussion points are right on target and we’re so glad to see woodworking skills & creativity increasingly recognized in school programs. Cheers!!

Linda Hebert
V I Reed & Cane Inc.

As an educator with CT Audubon Society, I am working to involve children in Harvard’s “Our Changing Forests” LTER Program. I just subscribed to “Northern Woodlands” and was thrilled to see this article written by my former student, Brett McLeod.
Looking forward to reading more!

Beech is a fine wood for simple kitchen spoons with handles turned on the lathe and bowls shaped by hand.

Lovely stuff Elise. I love getting some “interspecies fellowship” occasionally.

I’ve been a Connecticut hunter, trapper and fisherman for 60 years. I don’t see many any more but they were always called “partridge” here in northwestern Connecticut. I can always tell newly minted outdoorsmen since they are the ones calling “partridge” grouse.

My husband and I were at the Montreal Botanical Garden in Montreal, Canada in July, 2019. The garden consists of around 800 acres with many different types of habitats and a panoply of flowering trees ,shrubs and herbaceous plants. During our 3-4 hours of walking around,we spotted 1 butterfly and a handful of insects. It was very disconcerting and we stopped to talk to a pair of gardeners who expressed concern also,mentioning that the insect population at the garden had crashed,compared to previous years. Very scary !!!!!

Has anyone studied the meadow vole to see what they eat? Its possible that because the trees are not growing in the meadow that they don’t have the chance to eat the fungus/mycorrhizae to then distribute the pellets to encourage the sapling growth. So to get rid of the meadow vole before it has a chance to help could potentially hurt the habitat in another way. It seems likely that the meadow vole will inhabit the meadow eventually or that the other vole doesn’t like the meadow which will make the idea fruitless. If meadow is it’s natural habitat for one species and the forest is the natural habitat for the other vole it seems to make sense to make it work how it naturally should work. Just a thought from a person who is not a scientist. :) I loved the article and it has given incite to my research on mycorrhizae. Thank you!

Hi Brett
I agree with you that for proper and perfect sharpening of chainsaw it’s mandatory to use the correct size file. How could identify a dull file?

Thanks for the article. A good read.

The deer are absolutely beautiful and graceful to look at. We live right next to a very large forest with many deer. They have the comfort of the woods during winter and all year. Yes we do feed them, but only apples and carrots, nothing else. They are very protected in our environment and in the dead of winter, they still need some nutrition.