By Laurie D. Morrissey Even if you’ve never ventured farther into the forest than an urban park or a college campus, you’re probably familiar with Sciurus carolinensis, the eastern gray squirrel. While it’s easy to identify gray squirrels by sight, […]
Category: The Outside Story
Column, The Outside Story
Asiatic bittersweet: Festive, but invasive
My daily walk around my city this fall has been dominated by one plant. It is abundant and leafy with red berries and orange or yellow foliage. It seems to fit in perfectly with a New England autumn in its […]
Column, The Outside Story
The Canada goose migration: A grand spectacle of nature
› The musical honking of Canada geese and their V-shaped flocks streaming overhead are classic signs of autumn. I hear the clamor of geese as they fly low over my house, preparing to land in the hayfield in our valley. Sometimes I spot the large, black-necked birds before they […]
Column, The Outside Story
The trouble with rodenticides
By Anna Morris Last autumn, around the same time I was laying the winter quilt on our bed, my cat became very interested in the space beneath the kitchen sink. Unsurprisingly, a mouse was huddled down there, seeking shelter in […]
Column, The Outside Story
How to prevent spreading pests through firewood
By Jen Weimer For many of us, this season involves hunting, gathering, and preparing for a long, cold winter. This often includes stacking (or restacking) the firewood that’s been seasoning while we enjoyed the laid back warmer months of summer. […]
Column, The Outside Story
Eastern red bats migrating
By Conrad Baker Swift and apparently silent, a lone bat traces the contours of the woods’ edge at dusk, floating through canopy and meadow. In the last daylight, a sharp-eyed observer might catch a glimpse of white armpits, indicating that […]
Column, The Outside Story
How to spin a spider web
By Rachel Sargent Mirus One neighbor calls our house “the spider house” because so many orb weavers spin webs outside our large living room windows. Our spiders work on their webs at dawn and dusk, and I watch their silhouettes […]
Column, The Outside Story
The tangled tale of the Ash-Tree Bolete
By Rachel Sargent Mirus If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then surely the friend of my enemy is my enemy. This inverted cliche is one way to characterize the tangled relationship between ash trees and the ash-tree […]
Column, The Outside Story
How to grow milkweed for a monarch crop
By Elise Tillinghast During a late summer walk, I noticed that the common milkweed in our back field is becoming not-so-common. Once vigorous patches of the milky green plants have dwindled, engulfed in a sea of Canada goldenrod. Goldenrod is […]
Column, The Outside Story
Freshwater marshes are biodiversity hotspots
Sunlight glinted off the water as we paddled our canoe along a winding channel which led through a marsh of tall grasses and wild rice. Two white, long-legged birds – great egrets – stalked the shallow water, poised to spear […]