If you are prone to looking up as you walk (or pedal or drive) among trees, you may have noticed a bumper crop of cones clinging to the highest branches of white pine trees this summer and fall. Around my […]
Category: The Outside Story
The Outside Story: Muscling through migration
During the autumn months, many birds migrate from their summer breeding grounds in the Northeast to warmer wintering areas south of our region. Migratory birds include many species of raptors and waterfowl, which we often notice because of the […]
The Outside Story: Buckthorn: A tenacious invasive
Of all the non-native, invasive plants in the Northeast, buckthorn is among the most hated by forest stewards. There are two types of invasive buckthorn in our region: glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus) and common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), also called […]
The Outside Story: A witch in the woods
In late autumn, well past the showy blossoms of summer, even after fall’s late bloomers have faded and the trees have dropped their leaves, there is one shrubby plant still putting on a flower show: American witch hazel (Hamamelis […]
The Outside Story: Caterpillar club fungi – more than meets the eye
By Rachel Sargent Mirus “Look!” I exclaimed, bending to examine a pair of half-inch-tall, bright orange, club-shaped mushrooms. Kneeling in the leaf litter, with my 2-year-old son watching in puzzlement, I carefully scraped away at the base of the […]
The Outside Story: Moose in rut
On an October day years ago, my husband and I were canoeing on a pond in the Green Mountain National Forest. We heard crashing in the bushes along the shoreline just before a magnificent bull moose with large antlers appeared. […]
The Outside Story: If a tree falls in the woods, it creates opportunity
In May of this year, when a cottonwood measuring nearly 3 ½ feet in diameter and more than 100 feet tall fell across a trail in the Saint Michael’s College Natural Area, I saw the event less as a […]
The Outside Story: Buttonbush is a boon for wildlife
As autumn begins and insect populations dwindle, many waterfowl species rely increasingly on seeds as a food source. Common buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), with its spherical bouquets of seeds now ripening, provides food for an array of ducks, geese, and other […]
The Outside Story: Why do some mushrooms glow in the dark?
I recently found myself sitting in the crawl space of my house holding a bioluminescent mushroom. I’d been on a quest to find one of these light-producing mushrooms and, on my birthday, had collected a jack o’lantern (Omphalotus illudens), so […]
The Outside Story: The peculiar acorn pip gall wasp
In northern New England, acorns ripen in late summer and normally drop from oak trees from September through October. They may fall earlier, however, for a host of reasons, from eager squirrels getting a head start on gathering nuts […]