By Lee Emmons This spring, as you walk outside, keep an ear open for two distinctive bird songs: “zee zee zee zee zo zee” or “zee zee zo zo zee.” If you hear them, you’ve identified a black-throated green warbler […]
Category: The Outside Story
Column, The Outside Story
Stinging nettles: friend or foe?
By Hanna Holcomb I often watch out for stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) while hiking in central Vermont. As you might guess from its name, brushing against this plant causes a bee sting-like burn that can last for hours. Despite this […]
Column, The Outside Story
Yellow birch: a long-lived northern forest tree
By Susan Shea One summer, I took a nature drawing class, and we hiked up Stowe Pinnacle to sketch in the cool, mountain forest. I chose to draw a big yellow birch that had established itself on the steep slope. […]
Column, Home and Garden, The Outside Story
Brown creepers: denizens of the bark
By Lee Emmons On certain afternoons, if I time it just right, I may spot a brown creeper (Certhia americana) on the trunk of a tree in my front yard. Moving stealthily, almost imperceptibly up the tree, the brown creeper […]
Column, Home and Garden, The Outside Story
Fly flight control
By Rachel Sargent Mirus On sunny, warm days, houseflies hatch and buzz around homes and offices. These flies complete aerobatic stunts that easily evade human efforts at swatting or shooing. That aerial agility, so frustrating to the would-be swatters, is […]
Column, The Outside Story
Wetlands filter and enrich the landscape
By Declan McCabe One spring, following heavy rain, I visited the Saint Michael’s College Natural Area hoping to capture exciting photographs of the rushing Winooski River. Rather than raging floodwaters, however, I found the river’s floodplain was efficiently – and […]
Column, The Outside Story
Salamander secrets
By Susan Shea On a warm, rainy April night a few years ago, I drove up our muddy, rutted dirt road through the mist, steering around the wood frogs hopping across the road. As I approached the vernal pool, there […]
Column, The Outside Story
Daphnia: living time capsules
At this very moment, nestled into the sediment at the bottom of your nearest lake or pond, are Daphnia eggs – as many as 100,000 per square meter, according to one Michigan study. A genus of microscopic crustaceans, Daphnia are […]
Column, The Outside Story
Beavers: landscape engineers
By Declan McCabe When my sisters visit from Ireland, I try to play tour guide, but I’m occasionally at a loss for what to do next. During a visit in the late 1990s, my sister Grace said she would love […]
Column, The Outside Story
Bluebirds in Winter
By Lee Emmons On Valentine’s Day, as I sat down to write, I noticed a burst of blue outside my upstairs window. Looking out with my binoculars, I counted six eastern bluebirds. Clustered on and below my suet feeders, they […]