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…

  On a recent hike up Eagle Mountain in Milton, Vermont, we climbed to a ledge overlooking Lake Champlain. Turkey vultures soared overhead, tilting back and forth on the breeze. A sheer cliff dropped to the forest below us, a lush variety of plants clinging to its face. Cliffs are defined as areas of exposed…

  Until 65 million years ago, huge reptiles dominated our planet – and every summer I think they might be making a comeback. The sight of a snapping turtle hauling herself onto a sunny log or lifting her incredible bulk on mud-colored legs always fills me with prehistoric daydreams. Turtles have roamed the Earth for…

   A caterpillar eats and eats, becomes a chrysalis, and after a period of metamorphosis emerges as a beautiful butterfly! Except, sometimes… it doesn’t quite work that way. Occasionally, while sitting on my deck, I spot smallish, orange butterflies landing on our hop plants. Their upper wings, about 2 inches across, are bright orange with…

  The doodlebug waits. It is patient. It is silent. And it is hidden under a fine layer of dry, loose, sandy soil at the bottom of a small conical pit. Soon, a wandering ant will slip down the side of the pit, where the sickle-shaped mandibles of the doodlebug will rise from the bottom…

For most of the year, it’s hard to find a pond without at least a few mallards swimming around. These ducks, with their green-headed drakes and streaky brown hens, are among the most common water birds throughout the Northeast. In spring and fall, mallard flocks are ubiquitous, gobbling up grasses and aquatic plants. In winter,…

  At first, I suspected it was the deer that had almost completely defoliated the northern spicebush sapling I had planted just weeks earlier. Only days prior, it had been brimming with new growth, and now all that remained were two leaves wrapped into cigarlike cylinders. Curious, I inspected this pair of surviving leaves. At…

  Named for their polka-dot-like markings, spotted turtles have declined throughout most of their range, which stretches from Maine south along the Atlantic coastal plain to northern Florida, and from western New York into the eastern Great Lakes states. This species is listed as threatened or endangered in northern New England states.  While I have…

   Spittlebugs are the color of a new spring leaf, their bodies both tiny and so fat that you hardly notice their six miniature legs underneath. This plumpness makes them an appetizing snack for various insect predators—or would, anyway, if spittlebugs didn’t have an elaborate adaptation to keep them safe.  Spittlebugs live in a variety…

  When I worked on a college campus, a northern mockingbird often accompanied me on the walk between my car and my office. This slender gray bird darted from the hedges, flashing white wing patches and outer tail feathers before landing on a crabapple branch, where it poured forth a string of trills and phrases,…