This Week in the Woods

This Week in the Woods, we decided to devote this space to resolving, once and for all, a question that has concerned generations of young researchers: Yes, deer can fly. This photo shows a…

This Week in the Woods, our shed camera trap project revealed a beautiful weasel, probably a long-tailed weasel, in the act of carrying off its mouse prey. Weasels are relatively new animals.…

This Week in the Woods, we’ve been spying on flying squirrels (they appear to be southern flying squirrels) in a barn. These beautiful little animals, not much bigger than chipmunks, are…

This Week in the Woods, we’re sharing the third installment in our apple orchard photography project: a striped skunk who, based on its defensive posture, looks less-than-pleased to have…

This Week in the Woods, wild turkeys are out in agricultural fields, gleaning seeds left from harvests and, no doubt, the insects and other small prey they find there, too. Given how prevalent…

This Week in the Woods, our apple orchard photography project continues to yield fun results. In last week’s post, we shared an image of a gray fox. This week, it’s an eastern…

This Week in the Woods, a nighttime camera trap at the edge of an apple orchard revealed the presence of a deer, porcupine, and this handsome gray fox. As noted in this Outside Story essay by…

This Week in the Woods, we encountered a mass of white fluff on an alder that wiggled a bit when we passed our hands over it. This was a clump of woolly alder aphids – tiny insects…

This Week in the Woods, during a staff walk near our office, we discovered a large clubtail dragonfly that we later identified as a female zebra clubtail. One clue that you may be looking at a…

This Week in the Woods, puffballs have ripened and want you to stomp them. A favorite among kids, these fungi produce millions of tiny spores inside their fruiting bodies. Once the spores are…

This Week in the Woods, we encountered a flock of palm warblers flitting back and forth between a corn field edge and trees along the Ompompanoosuc River. The birds breed in boreal forests,…

This Week in the Woods, we found approximately 50 wood ducks perched together in trees along a river. In the Northeast, migration occurs from September to November. Although some wood ducks…

This Week in the Woods, we found this Wilson’s snipe in a local wetland. These birds look like elongated versions of their distant cousins, American woodcocks (both in the sandpiper…

This Week in the Woods, we brushed up against some tree bark, and it flew away, flashing pink stripes as it went. Happily, this underwing moth didn’t go far. Once it had settled back…

This Week in the Woods, we’ve been paying closer attention to bumblebees. Like most other pollinators, they’re winding down their year as the weather cools. Unlike honeybee hives,…

This Week in the Woods, we never actually made it into the woods, because we got distracted by so much interesting life at the trees’ edge. We found this great egret stalking frogs in a…

This Week in the Woods, it’s common nighthawk migration season, and in what has become an annual tradition, Tig Tillinghast staked out a local dam site and riverside fields at dusk to…

This Week in the Woods, we found patches of cardinal flower blooming along the Connecticut River. As noted in this profile from The Native Plant Trust, these vivid summer wildflowers –…

This Week in the Woods, we were very surprised when a barred owl alit on a branch just a few feet from us, on a frequently-walked trail. It called once, then swiveled its head to track…

This Week in the Woods, we encountered a beaver just as it clambered up from a lower impoundment and splashed back into the water. This is a fun time to visit a beaver pond, to observe how the…