Discover More from This Category: The Outside Story

The Outside Story: How loons winter

April 13, 2016
By Tiffany Soukup When I was a child, I looked forward to spending summers with my grandmother at our family cottage on a Canadian lake. Every year, as soon as I was out of the car, we would run to the point to look and listen for loons. As an adult, I still watch loons.…

The Outside Story: Turkey Tail Fungus

April 6, 2016
By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul During my walks through the woods these days, I am often accompanied by curious children. These children, who are my own, notice many things that I often do not, and they are filled with questions. Who made that track? Why does this grow here? What kind of mushroom is that? With…

The Outside Story: How are caves created?

March 23, 2016
By Susan Shea To enter the cave, we donned hard hats and descended a vertical drop with the aid of a rope. We crawled on our knees and bellies through a wet, narrow passageway, emerging into a large underground chamber that contained a small lake. By the light of our headlamps, we could make out…

The Outside Story: Weasel “Evel Knievels”

March 16, 2016
By Elise Tillinghast My friend Gordon Russell sent me a letter recently describing a wildlife encounter. He had been following deer tracks along a stone wall when a movement caught his attention. “Almost before its image could travel to my brain,” he wrote, “the white head of a weasel vanished in between the stones.” The…

The Outside Story: The buzz on honey flavors

March 9, 2016
By Joe Rankin It’s still the middle of winter, but the sun is climbing higher each day and I know that it won’t be long until my honeybees are out seeking nectar and pollen. From early-blooming red maple trees. Then sugar maples, apple trees, dandelions. From blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. From clover, staghorn sumac, and…

In cold, wet woods, needle ice sprouts

March 2, 2016
By Rachel Sargent The bare ground of the trail wound through dead leaves and patchy snow. At a short overhang in the trail, I noticed spiky threads of ice growing up from the soil in crunchy clusters. A careless boot revealed how fragile these formations are; the fine ice threads crumbled readily. This was needle…

To boost plant growth, growers enrich soils with biochar

February 24, 2016
By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul At this time of year, many a gardener’s daydreams turn to the springtime promise of sprouting plants. Seed catalogs start arriving in the mail months before the soil will be thawed and drained enough for planting, and we use this downtime to plan for the coming season. At Green Fire Farm…

Lichen—not technically a plant

February 17, 2016
By Joe Rankin On cold winter days, while feeding sticks of firewood into my woodstove, I sometimes pause, my eye caught by lichens. Splotchy circles, lacy tendrils. Soft gray, muted gray-green, black. They mottle the bark. When I look out the window next to my desk, I see splashes of lichen on the roof of…

Goshawk: apex accipiter

February 10, 2016
By Thomas Ames, Jr. “The Boke of St. Albans,” a 15th century sportsman’s handbook, decreed that only a nobleman could hunt with a falcon, but a mere yeoman might settle for a goshawk. “In the talons there was death,” wrote T. H. White, who famously chronicled in “The Goshawk” his naive attempt to “man” one…

The Outside Story: Have you seen a mountain lion?

February 3, 2016
By Madeline Bodin In the photo, the mountain lion lies on its side on the shoulder of a Connecticut parkway. Taillights shine in the distance. A Connecticut state trooper snapped the photo after a motorist had struck and killed the animal on a June night in 2011. Wildlife biologists quickly confirmed this mountain lion was…

Ice magic

January 28, 2016
illustration for this column was drawn by Adelaide Tyrol By Laurie Morrissey Last night, the floodlights were on at my favorite skating lake. Several children wearing plastic skates and shiny helmets were gliding on the ice, shepherded by young parents. A father pulled a Nordic-looking sled with upturned runners, his bundled-up cargo insisting, “More!” each…

The Outside Story: A warm winter’s winners and losers

January 18, 2016
  By Tim Traver During a mild winter in northern New England, there are those of us who rejoice over our lower heating bills and those who scan the forecast, hoping for cold and snow. In a classic El Niño year like this one, when we often get unseasonably mild weather well into February, there…

The Outside Story: Crows

January 8, 2016
Crow communication is cawfully complicated By Joe Rankin “Caw! Caw!” Every spring we hear it. And my wife says, “that’s My Crow.” It’s apparently the bird’s name. She capitalizes it in her tone. I think she hasn’t bestowed a more formal name because she doesn’t know whether it’s a male or female. My Crow is…

The Outside Story: What colors can deer see?

January 8, 2016
By Dave Mance III If you’re a hunter who’s ever ordered something from a sporting goods company, it’s probably safe to assume that you’ve been inundated with catalogues over the past four months. God help you if you save your seed catalogues, too. If you take a moment to flip through your now complete seasonal…

The Outside Story: Owl’s winter hunt

January 6, 2016
By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul For several days last winter, a barred owl perched atop a dead white birch tree in our field. As winters go, last year’s was very cold, and the owl puffed up against the stubbornly below-freezing temperatures, its streaky brown and white feathers fluffed and fluttering in the icy breeze. Occasionally the…