Site Discussions

I have a skunk in my crawl space. If I leave it alone will it leave the same way it got in. Thanks

I have a pussy willow growing over an electrical conduit so it needs to be removed. Fortunately I live on a lake and plan to take cuttings to replant. Catkins are just coming out now. When would be the best time to do the cuttings? Should I wait till after the plant flowers? Thanks

To the person talking live trap & relocation, that might be ok, if you would be ok with having someone else relocate porcupines to your forest area where they would chew up & kill your trees.
Please, folks, take into consideration if you would like to having something done that you are considering to someone else. That goes for skunk relocation too.
Thank you.

What a beautiful, passionate article!  Laurie has followed her dreams and pursued her love of the natural world and animals, and documented this through photography. Truly inspiring story! Thank you for sharing with NF readers.  Marion Gray, Warren, Maine

Thank you for this interesting article - and special thanks to Adelaide Tyrol for the extra beautiful illustration.  I have loved her work for years, and it’s a joy to see it regularly in The Outside Story.

I enjoyed reading about your success with Eastern Bluebirds. I’m used to them losing out to invasive English sparrows rather than to our tree swallows.

Behind our barn there has been a beautiful, fairly young tree that I was advised is an American elm. Watching it mature, with its beautiful canopy, has been a joy, until abruptly about a year and a half ago it started to die back, one branch, then one limb, and now the entire tree. Some of the limbs are falling, and are too large for me to remove them. It was quick and heartbreaking. Is there any resource to remove the tree, before whatever caused its demise becomes a safety problem (falling limbs) or for the health of the surrounding trees? Sadly, I know of no other elm trees here on our farm in MidCoast Maine.

Our bluebird family has overwintered for several years.  Papa and Mama bluebird hang out with their previous season’s brood, feasting on the dried mealworms we provide every morning (they are waiting at sun-up). They have learned to peck on the suet over the years by watching other birds. This year the family group numbered 7.  At some time each year, Mama and Papa shoo away their brood.  This year it was a record-setting (for us) March 4.  We have 7 nest boxes.  The bluebirds have to work hard to remain in possession of 1 after the tree swallows arrive.

I have a bird house by my front door, that chickadee always nest in. Should I remove old abandoned nests, allowing new “tenants”  to build their own, or will they reuse old nests? I want to keep them at their happiest
Thank you
Kathy B

Does hardwood and softwood make a difference in the angle you sharpen a chain at?

Earliest known leaf miners were recently found in Massachusetts in a 300+ million year old fossil…

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-unearthing-leaf-miners-ancient-million-year-old.html

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND Charley’s works, his book ‘Tracks & Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates’ (http://charleyeiseman.com/publications/) and his e-book ‘Leafminers of North America’. At Distant Hill Gardens, our nonprofit environmental learning center in Walpole, New Hampshire, we had the privilege of hosting Charley for an amazing and enlightening ‘Insect Tracking’ workshop in 2022. The experience transformed the way all attendees, myself included, now perceive the relationship between plants and insects. With Charley’s guidance, we learned how to more closely observe plants in a landscape and to uncover the subtle evidence of insects utilizing them as host plants, deepening our understanding of the intricate relationship between plants and insects and their importance within a functioning ecosystem.

Thank you, Charley, for opening my eyes to the overlooked but ever present plant/insect interactions taking place right in front of us!

We had a flock of about 20 pine grosbeaks last winter. That hung around for several weeks and ate us out of house and home!

What a great profile of Charley.  I heartily recommend his “Tracks and Sign” book (http://charleyeiseman.com/publications/).  Its content could provide a virtually inexhaustible supply of content for Northern Woodlands’ “What in the Woods is That?” quiz.

The lack of snowpack over the last 20 years breaks my heart. Yes, I miss xc skiing out my back door, but what truly scares me is the effect this is having on our environment. I worry about the ancient maples in my front yard with no blanket of snow to speak of, the subnivean critters, exposed to the severe cold we’ve had this past week, and the future weather patterns we ar facing. I wish our government would take climate change seriously and show some leadership.

Great article. Finally, someone is starting to talk about the catastrophic loss of winter in the only sense that really matters - loss. Not “transition,” or “change,” but loss, period. Anyone who does not feel a deep sense of loss and grief over the human destruction of winter is not fully human as far as I’m concerned.

I have to take exception to a couple points, however. There will be no snow at all in the American northeast by 2100; Vermont will have the climate of NE Alabama by 2050, if not sooner. For a number of understandable reasons the IPCC models are far too conservative, as has been repeatedly shown in real world measurement over the past ten years. Climate change is not linear, and its rate of acceleration is increasing as can be plainly seen over the past five years. Models and studies that necessarily rely on past data significantly underestimate Earth’s climate sensitivity and are poor predictors of future outcomes.

This is important because we need to understand and prepare for actual outcomes, not convenient fictions. However much emotionally desired or data driven, these are not accurate understandings of future reality. It is indeed much worse than anyone wants to admit or think about. This is not “doomer” talk; it’s the reality we’ve created, and if we’re to be reality based this must be the framework for these kinds of discussions, which for many if not most of us requires acknowledgement and acceptance of something noone wants to acknowledge or accept. In that vein, Jim Henson’s 2023 paper, “Global Warming In the Pipeline,” should be required reading for everyone in the environmental field. 

Again, great article. This is why I love this magazine.

This is somewhat similar to the northward migrations of backyard feeder birds such as tufted titmice and red bellied woodpeckers. These southern birds are now being sighting throughout New England. Similarly to opossums, these expansions probably have to do with greater winter survival rates due to the availability of foods, such as bird seed and beef suet, in urban, suburban, and rural backyards.

A few years back, we saw a dead opossum on the road shortly before avoiding two that were very much alive. Strangely, the opossum pair appeared to be travelling together.

Surprisingly, this was near Lancaster in northern New Hampshire, which is north of Littleton.
This was well north of central New Hampshire, so a significant sighting suggesting that they are indeed migrating north.

Eastern newt toxins might be specific to vertebrates, especially fish.
Supposedly, though, crayfish also avoid them.

We have a possum living in our backyard this winter, midcoast Maine.