This Week in the Woods

This week in the woods, the torrential rains over the past few days have been a hardship for nesting birds, threatening both ground nests and, to a lesser degree, nests in trees. We found…

This week in the woods, we found a family of fish crows rummaging in the vegetation along a river bank. Fish crows are slightly smaller than American crows but otherwise very difficult to…

This week in the woods, we enjoyed our office backyard “moth ball” with lepidopterist JoAnne Russo, who identified a whopping 86 different moth species flitting through the night…

This week in the woods, we discovered a wild turkey egg tucked within a decaying tree stump and partly covered with moss and wood. To figure out what had happened, we checked with Northern…

This Week in the Woods, there are several showy wildflowers coming in bloom, including lady’s slippers, columbine, rhodora, and painted trillium. Meghan McCarthy McPhaul took this…

This Week in the Woods, we’re continuing last week’s theme of high bird drama with two images (courtesy of Tig Tillinghast) of a male red-winged blackbird attacking a crow. Moments…

This week in the woods, the summer canopy is rapidly closing, which means that the window of opportunity to easily observe summer forest birds is closing, too. Scarlet tanagers are especially…

This Week in the Woods, bald eagle chicks are growing quickly, and by this point, many have shed their white baby fuzz. The eaglet in this nest (photographed with a high magnification lens…

This Week in the Woods, hermit thrushes are back and flitting around in pairs, with stops along the way to rummage in leaf litter for tasty invertebrates. One of the key identifying traits of…

This week in the woods, one of our most exquisite spring ephemeral wildflowers is starting to bloom. Bloodroot — a member of the poppy family that gets its name from the red juice in its…

Most weeks, this blog covers relatively easy-to-see species. This week, we’re making an exception, for a happy reason: this past week, a team of volunteers documented four-toed…

This week in the woods, one of our most exciting finds was, by design, not very exciting to look at. This is a well-hidden active barred owl nest, a status we realized a few seconds after…

This week in the woods, we’re at a seasonal tipping point, when there’s still snow blanketing many areas, but on sunny, south-facing slopes, the first wildflowers are blooming. We…

This week in the woods, we’re sharing a mostly-bird themed post, along with a timely PSA that despite the snowy conditions, bears are waking up. Wildlife biologists recommend bringing in…

This week in the woods, we persuaded two eye-rolling teenagers to accompany us out to a roadside swamp, where we gave them a long lecture on the wonders of skunk cabbages. The rosy spathes of…

This week in the woods, if all this mud and snow has you feeling a bit desperate to see flowering plants, consider cutting some red maple stems and putting them in a jar of water on a window…

This Week in the Woods, we were delighted to see this eastern bluebird pair, a few yards away from an available bird house. Bluebirds are partial migrants, and during a mild winter season,…

This week in the woods, we discovered this pileated woodpecker excavation in a dead tree, with wood chips and dislodged tinder polypore conks scattered around the tree’s base. If you…

This Week in the Woods, we finally climbed up a steep hillside to collect photos from a game camera near a log, where different species urinate, rub scent glands, and otherwise leave their…

This week in the woods, we took a walk along the Ompompanoosuc River, where this winter’s ongoing temperature swings have created debris fields of ice shards. These start during a thaw…