Discover More from This Category: The Outside Story
Squirrel talk: What does that noise mean?
November 30, 2022
By Laurie D. Morrissey Even if you’ve never ventured farther into the forest than an urban park or a college campus, you’re probably familiar with Sciurus carolinensis, the eastern gray squirrel. While it’s easy to identify gray squirrels by sight, however, recognizing the various sounds they make is more complicated. Their vocalizations – squeaks, moans,…
Asiatic bittersweet: Festive, but invasive
November 23, 2022
My daily walk around my city this fall has been dominated by one plant. It is abundant and leafy with red berries and orange or yellow foliage. It seems to fit in perfectly with a New England autumn in its color and exuberance. Despite its festive appearance however, this plant — Celastrus orbiculatus, more commonly…
The Canada goose migration: A grand spectacle of nature
November 16, 2022
› The musical honking of Canada geese and their V-shaped flocks streaming overhead are classic signs of autumn. I hear the clamor of geese as they fly low over my house, preparing to land in the hayfield in our valley. Sometimes I spot the large, black-necked birds before they take off to continue their journey.Where are they com- ing from, I wonder, and where are they going?…
The trouble with rodenticides
November 9, 2022
By Anna Morris Last autumn, around the same time I was laying the winter quilt on our bed, my cat became very interested in the space beneath the kitchen sink. Unsurprisingly, a mouse was huddled down there, seeking shelter in the warmth. Though I was sympathetic, and all wildlife is welcome in our yard, I’d…
How to prevent spreading pests through firewood
November 2, 2022
By Jen Weimer For many of us, this season involves hunting, gathering, and preparing for a long, cold winter. This often includes stacking (or restacking) the firewood that’s been seasoning while we enjoyed the laid back warmer months of summer. Humans have used wood as a source of heat since they learned to control fire…
Eastern red bats migrating
October 26, 2022
By Conrad Baker Swift and apparently silent, a lone bat traces the contours of the woods’ edge at dusk, floating through canopy and meadow. In the last daylight, a sharp-eyed observer might catch a glimpse of white armpits, indicating that this is no barn bat or attic bat. This is an eastern red bat. Eastern…
How to spin a spider web
October 19, 2022
By Rachel Sargent Mirus One neighbor calls our house “the spider house” because so many orb weavers spin webs outside our large living room windows. Our spiders work on their webs at dawn and dusk, and I watch their silhouettes against pastel skies as they move like aerialists – twisting, pulling, building, repairing. The orb…
The tangled tale of the Ash-Tree Bolete
October 13, 2022
By Rachel Sargent Mirus If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then surely the friend of my enemy is my enemy. This inverted cliche is one way to characterize the tangled relationship between ash trees and the ash-tree bolete. The ash-tree bolete (Boletinellus merulioides) is a fan-shaped brown mushroom with an off-center stem.…
How to grow milkweed for a monarch crop
October 5, 2022
By Elise Tillinghast During a late summer walk, I noticed that the common milkweed in our back field is becoming not-so-common. Once vigorous patches of the milky green plants have dwindled, engulfed in a sea of Canada goldenrod. Goldenrod is a habitat rock star, and during this walk, I counted at least 13 moth, wasp,…
Freshwater marshes are biodiversity hotspots
September 21, 2022
Sunlight glinted off the water as we paddled our canoe along a winding channel which led through a marsh of tall grasses and wild rice. Two white, long-legged birds – great egrets – stalked the shallow water, poised to spear fish with their pointed bills. A bald eagle landed in a tree, squawking as it…
Brown thrashers skulk through thickets
September 14, 2022
By Lee Emmons The brown thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) lives out its days in relative seclusion. Like the gray catbird, which has a similar fondness for thickets and shrubby areas, brown thrashers haunt areas of dense cover, although discerning eyes may be able to spot these birds within that habitat. Even when they’re out of sight,…
Rethinking the lawn
September 7, 2022
By Tim Traver This spring, we went the no-mow route on about a quarter-acre of our lawn, the last remaining groomed piece we hadn’t turned into vegetable garden or permanent meadow. What a relief! During the hottest, driest spells over the summer, the grass wasn’t growing anyway. The lawn we did mow during the drought…
Splitting the air
August 31, 2022
The unexpected chemistry of lightning By Kenrick Vezina To say that lightning “splits” the sky is no mere poetry. A single stroke contains about one billion joules of energy, roughly 280 kilowatt-hours of electricity, and could power a modern American household for more than nine days. What’s more, it’s enough to blast apart the very…
Loon vocalizations are more than meets the ear
August 17, 2022
By Laurie D. Morrissey On the New Hampshire lake where I spend much of the summer, loon calls are so common that I sometimes take them for granted. The sounds of the common loon (Gavia immer) are iconic of wilderness and have been described as haunting, plaintive, maniacal, other-worldly, even wolf-like. Recently, I’ve started listening…
Blueberries: summer treasures
August 10, 2022
By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul Among summer’s many sweet offerings are wild berries. And among these, blueberries are my favorite. Years ago, I took to carrying large, empty yogurt containers in my car – and smaller vessels in my backpack – so I would have something to fill should I pass a good berry patch. My…