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 […]
Tag: the outside story
The Outside Story: Cliffs host varied flora and fauna
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 […]
Owls on the nest
By Anna Morris Among the very earliest signs of spring are the strange caterwauls of the barred owls that haunt our woods: “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” Their hooted conversations, thrown back and forth through forests […]
Winter survival: Keeping the heat
To survive the cold of winter, some animals take advantage of protected habitats, such as wooded areas or under a blanket of insulating snow. Ruffed grouse, for example, fly into piles of loose snow and create roosting cavities to rest […]
Little loudmouths: How tiny animals make so much noise
From early spring through late summer, the air trills and croaks and buzzes and chirps with the sounds of nature’s little loudmouths. Mornings are full of birdsong; evenings are the domain of frogs and crickets. How do such little animals […]
River Otters swim through Vermont’s waters
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 […]
Fly flight control
By Rachel Sargent Mirus On sunny, warm days, houseflies hatch and buzz around homes and offices. These flies complete aerobatic stunts that easily evade human efforts at swatting or shooing. That aerial agility, so frustrating to the would-be swatters, is […]
The Outside Story: The amazing chickadee
by Susan Shea Black-capped chickadees are one of the most frequent visitors to our bird feeders in winter, but do we really know them? This common bird exhibits some remarkable behaviors and winter survival strategies. Undoubtedly you’ve heard the familiar […]
Just a random rock
By Dave Mance III Act One opens in a forest on the western slopes of the Taconic Mountains in southwestern Vermont. A man in his 40’s is walking with his former high-school geology teacher – a man now in his […]
Feeding deer does much harm, little good
By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul A few winters back, a doe frequented our compost heap. The garden fence around it proved an inadequate barrier, as she simply hopped over it to nosh on the rotting shards of jack-o-lanterns and the latest […]