This Week in the Woods

This week in the woods has us admiring our great variety of warblers, either settling in for the summer or passing through for points north. The small, needle-billed, bug-eating neotropical…

This week in the woods marks the waning days of some of our earliest-blooming spring ephemerals. The region has two spring beauty species – Carolina spring beauty (Claytonia caroliniana,…

This week in the woods, we continue through the period between the loss of snow cover and the canopy closing. In this window, before light becomes too limited, spring ephemerals can complete…

This week in the woods, male wild turkeys continue to put on breeding displays for females, with dramatic, attention-getting gobbles, postures, and color changes. With their gobbling, the toms…

This week in the woods, turkey vultures have soared, trout lily leaves have started to poke up, song sparrows have been singing, and aspen and red maple have flowered. This caddisfly larva…

This week in the woods, north-facing slopes still hold some snow cover, but rising temperatures have melted almost all snow on many south-facing slopes. If they haven’t already, the…

This week in the woods marks the middle of the breeding season for the gray jay, or Canada jay, which we find nearby in the Northeast Kingdom and White Mountains, including Mount Moosilauke.…

This week in the woods, fisher tracks wove through mature mixed hardwoods, planted red pines, and hemlock stands, along downed logs, across streams, and over wooded hills. We followed the…

This week in the woods, snowmelt revealed what has remained green all winter: wall scalewort reaching toward the blue sky from around tree bases, Christmas ferns flattened against the leaf…

This week in the woods, a swirling mass of Bohemian waxwings gave us a treat as they descended on a neighbor’s tree to consume their own treat of winter berries. These plump but sleek…

This week in the woods, a short-tailed shrew risked a foray out onto the surface of the snow, where its sooty fur stood out against the white. These mammals do not hibernate but rather grow a…

This week in the woods, we see an array of tree seeds splayed across the snow that reflect the composition of our forests. This hophornbeam bract separated from a conelike cluster that made up…

This week in the woods, we heard the sharp, harsh jip calls from a gregarious flock of red crossbills and watched them alight on this red spruce and begin to forage. While a medieval European…

This week in the woods, we encountered a pair of bald eagles that had begun rebuilding a nest in Lyme, New Hampshire. Many overwintering birds, like the bald eagle to the left, fluff up their…

This week in the woods, we shared a moment with a boreal chickadee, the more reclusive, higher-elevation cousin of our familiar feeder bird, the black-capped chickadee. Through the winter, the…

This week in the woods, the familiar cigar shapes of cattails’ pollinated female flowers waved over a beaver pond in West Fairlee, Vermont. These cylinders are densely packed with…

This week in the woods, we’re watching the bouncy, undulating flight of the American goldfinch, which has earned comparison to a rollercoaster, a stone skipped across a lake, and a…

This week in the woods, we’ve appreciated visits from the tufted titmouse, a familiar, alert-looking songbird always busy at our feeders. The crest-headed birds have soft gray backs and…

This week in the woods, evening grosbeaks graced a forest margin in West Fairlee, Vermont, and their bright color evoked the sunshine of more tropical climes than their usual Canadian range.…