This week in the woods, we saw what might be some of the year’s last blooms, poisonous plants, and a glut of caterpillars, all in Vershire, Vermont. A geranium species native to the…
This Week in the Woods
This Week in the Woods shares seasonal images from the woods, wetlands and fields of the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont. What are you seeing this week in the woods? Submit a special photo for possible inclusion in our monthly Reader Photo Gallery. Sign up for our enewsletter to receive our latest content directly in your inbox.
September: Week Four
This week in the woods, messes of flowers – American-asters, goldenrods, and more – give the last, late blooms of summer and feed bees, butterflies, and other insects still flying.…
September: Week Three
This week in the woods, we try to follow the chaotic, speedy flights of sulphur butterflies over fields and along woodland edges. Difficult to chase down, highly variable, and often nearly…
September: Week Two
This week in the woods, a paw print, claw marks, and scat all come from black bears, which enter a period of increased feeding activity called hyperphagia in the fall. We are most likely to…
September: Week One
This week in the woods, along the edge of a protected forest in West Fairlee, Vermont, thin-leaved sunflowers continued their long, radiant bloom. While also known as the ten-petal sunflower…
August: Week Four
This week in the woods, a red eft ventured out of the leaf litter in defiance of the dry conditions and flaunted its orange skin, more luminous even than the impending fall foliage. You might…
August: Week Two
This week in the woods, an ambush bug perched in patient silence, eyes bulging, as it awaited prey atop a white turtlehead blooming in Corinth, Vermont. Like little Nosferatus of late-summer…
July: Week Four
This week in the woods, along the Linny Levin Trail through the Zebedee Wetlands in Thetford, Vermont, a number of blooms, berries, and butterflies were at or around their peak abundance.…
July: Week Two
This week in the woods, we admired this transverse-banded drone fly accumulating Rudbeckia pollen. This common insect belongs to the family Syrphidae, also known as syrphid flies, flower flies…
July: Week One
This week in the woods, one-flowered wintergreen popped up everywhere in a shaded Topsham, Vermont, pine stand but didn’t want to grant us the privilege of seeing its face unless we got…
June: Week Four
This week in the woods, in anticipation of Friday's third-annual Moth Ball at the Northern Woodlands offices in Lyme, we’re looking at some lepidoptera (three moths and a butterfly…
June: Week Three
This week in the woods, our boots squelched as we made our way to a colony of twinflowers spreading beside a wetland in Strafford, Vermont. This weak woody “subshrub” – or…
June: Week Two
This week in the woods, a number of plants showed their floral faces through the curtains of other leafy wetland growth. Three long twisted “flags” (a sepal up top and petals to…
June: Week One
This week in the woods, we found this yellow-headed looper moth hiding its titular head beneath a fold in a leaf. This moth also goes by the common names pitch pine looper and eastern pine…
May: Week Four
This week in the woods, the starflower is the star. One of the most common spring bloomers in northeastern woodlands and tolerant of shade, the wildflower is blossoming all over the floors of…
May: Week Three
This week in the woods, a black-throated green warbler, a bird more often high up in the forest canopy, deigned to visit us in the understory for a moment and sing its fitting song: I’m…
May: Week Two
This week in the woods, we have our eyes and binoculars out for warblers – those remarkable little creatures that have migrated hundreds or thousands of miles over the course of several…
May: Week One
This week in the woods, we’re trying to hold onto some sweet spring things before they grow up, move past bloom time, or lose their tenderness. These red fox kits (two of four siblings…
April: Week Five
This week in the woods, we headed out on a warm, wet night with headlamps, reflective vests, bucket, and spatula to usher migrating amphibians across Middlebrook Road in West Fairlee, Vermont.…
April: Week Four
This week in the woods, we’ve admired the clustered flowers of red maple – as have some pollinators. The stubby, seed-producing female flowers (usually red) and pollen-producing…