Discover More from This Category: The Outside Story

Minimizing migration’s perils

October 13, 2021
By Brett Amy Thelen One morning in early autumn, I was running errands in downtown Keene, New Hampshire, when I was stopped in my tracks by a flash of yellow. Crouching down, I found a gorgeous, palm-sized bird, olive above, with a belly as gold as sunshine. It was a species I’d never seen before,…

Blister beetles use chemical defense to deter predators

October 6, 2021
By Rachel Sargent Mirus “I’ve got something for you,” my husband calls from the front door. He’s found an oddly beautiful beetle in the autumn woods. It’s around of an inch long, a dark iridescent teal, and its wings and wing-covers look comically small. Something about its body shape reminds me of a fat carpenter…

Gentians provide fall color — and bumblebee food

September 29, 2021
By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul The deep purple caught my eye, an unexpected color amid the autumn-hued palette of gold, red, and orange. I stooped to look more closely, thinking perhaps someone had dropped some manmade thing on this grassy, well-traveled path along a hardwood stand. But, no, it was a flower, its summery-colored petals closed…

Purple finches provide year-round color

September 22, 2021
By Lee Emmons In September, as summer yields to fall, most of the colorful birds that breed in our region during spring and summer head south for warmer locales. The departure of ruby-throated hummingbirds, Baltimore orioles, migratory woodpeckers, and numerous warblers doesn’t leave us entirely without striking birds, however. Perhaps the most vivid remaining species…

As summer wanes, fawns lose their spots

September 15, 2021
By Laurie D. Morrissey I have often been stopped in my tracks by the sight of a white-tailed doe standing in the lush summer grass. Depending on the sun’s slant, the animal’s coat is a rich shade of rusty brown or burnt orange. More delightful still is the sight of a fawn, reddish brown with…

Common grackles show their colors

September 8, 2021
By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul The grackle appeared early last spring, the day before I put the feeder away (so as not to tempt the bears who would soon be awakening from their winter dens). In the dim light of a cloudy day, this avian visitor seemed at first to be just another blackbird, on the…

Ant-mimic spiders master disguise

September 1, 2021
By Rachel Sargent I put the small brown ant I had mounted (but never identified) under a microscope and peered down at it. Two huge, headlight-like eyes stared back at me. That couldn’t be right; ants don’t have eyes that size and shape. I took the specimen to my professor, who initially waved me off…

Climbing into the alpine zone

August 25, 2021
By Susan Shea Hikers climbing the Northeast’s highest peaks will traverse several different vegetative zones along the way. On the summits, they’ll likely encounter plants so hardy that many also grow in the Arctic, thousands of miles to the north. Many hikes begin in a northern hardwood forest dominated by beech, yellow birch, and sugar…

Opossums are moving north

August 18, 2021
By Declan McCabe The opossums that show up on my students’ trail cameras at Saint Michael’s College sometimes look out of place, with their naked tails and frostbitten ears that seem so poorly suited to Vermont weather. These amazing consumers of ticks did, after all, come from a different continent — or at least their…

Giant water bugs: Skillful swimmers with a powerful pinch

August 11, 2021
By Declan McCabe I was sitting poolside with my children on a summer day when another parent hustled her son out of the water because of a swimming cockroach. The “cockroach” turned out to be a giant water bug (family Belostomatidae), the largest of the hemipterans, or true bugs. These insects are typically found in…

Visiting an old forest

August 5, 2021
By Susan Shea Decayed wood crumbled underfoot as I stepped on a mossy log. The ground was almost hidden by a lush, diverse growth of wildflowers and ferns. Brown scapes of wild leeks poked up above mottled leaflets of Virginia waterleaf and heart-shaped leaves of wild ginger. A green canopy of mostly sugar maple and…

On the lookout for digger wasps

July 28, 2021
By Rachel Sargent Mirus Last summer while working in the garden, I was startled when a fast-flying wasp dropped a plump pumpkin spider on the soil in front of me. The wasp landed, grabbed the spider, and wiggled backwards into a small hole I hadn’t noticed, quickly covering the entrance as if to say, “Nothing…

How flowers get their color

July 22, 2021
By Frank Kaczmarek Sunlight exposes a palette of colors To quote the French dramatist Jean Giradoux, “The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.” Flowering plants fill our summer fields and gardens, bring bright spots of color to our woods, and, since their arrival on the…

The ‘gypsy’ moths invade

July 14, 2021
By Declan McCabe Occasionally I get an email from a camp, school or even my local Rotary asking if I can present an insect program. So it was not unusual last week for me to be handing insect nets to excited Cub Scouts. I led them toward some ash trees and made sure each scout…

River Otters swim through Vermont’s waters

July 7, 2021
One summer day, I was relaxing on the bank of a secluded pond watching mallard ducks forage when a dark shape broke the stillness of the water. It was a North American river otter, swimming with its head and back emerging from the surface, sleek body over two feet long, tapered tail trailing behind. It…