One winter day, while teaching a winter ecology class, I pulled on waders and rubber gloves, grabbed a catch net, and led my “Minibeasts of the Stream” program, discovering a rich variety of insects in the frigid waters of Kedron Brook in South Woodstock, Vermont. Insects are abundant in winter streams because they are able…

By Rebecca Perkins Hanissiant Of all life’s synergies, I appreciate most the one between my propensity for domestic procrastination and my love of moving through the outdoors — countless adventures are born of it. During a late November weekend, when faced with a day spent winterizing our home, my husband and I instead packed up…

  In winter, river otters head upstream into the uplands, seeking areas of fast-moving water that remain open—at least open enough for an otter to slip into a stream in pursuit of fish. You might catch a brief glimpse of an otter along one of these smaller streams, as I did years ago with my…

       I’ve always loved the idea of watching the sky for shooting stars. But I’m much more likely to be up to watch the sunrise than I am to stay awake past midnight, when most meteor showers happen. Lucky for me, the upcoming Geminid meteor shower will provide an opportunity to wish upon…

    By Susan Shea  For thousands of years, people have decorated their homes with evergreen boughs, a symbol of eternal life, during the darkest time of the year ­— around the winter-solstice and Christmas. In addition to common species such as spruce and fir, I’ve noticed another evergreen in my neighborhood: a low, sprawling…

 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 yard, the red squirrels have been busy gathering cones, chattering away as they scamper through…

  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 birds’ large size and their tendency to travel in groups. Sometimes, as is the case…

  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 European buckthorn. Both plants grow quickly, have prolific seed spreading habits, and have become so…

  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 virginiana). Four slender, wrinkly yellow petals, about ¾ of an inch long, adorn each of…

  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 colorful clubs. Just beneath the soil was a glossy brown moth pupa: the origin of…

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. He plunged into the water and swam across the pond, only 50 feet from where…

  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 tragedy, and more as a circle of life opportunity. As the saying goes, “Nothing in…

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 wetland denizens.  Buttonbush’s range spans southern Canada to Florida and from the Atlantic coast to…

 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 named for its bright orange color and nighttime glow. As my eyes adjusted to the…

  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 for the winter to environmental stress, including excessively hot or rainy weather. Prematurely dropped acorns…