The Outside Story: Humans aren’t the only sugarmakers

As steam rises from sugarhouse cupolas and early morning coffee pots, sugarmakers are working overtime to turn maple sap into golden syrup. But as it turns out, they aren’t alone: other living things are sugaring too, and their stories affect the syrup that is poured on your pancakes (or into your morning coffee).

The Outside Story: Ravens forage during the winter

It’s a familiar sight in winter: An inky-black raven soaring over a landscape white with snow. Though similar in appearance to the American crow, the common raven (Corvus corax) is distinguished by its large size, fluffy neck feathers, and long, thick bea … (read more)

The Outside Story: Look up! You might spot a squirrel drey

In the starkness of winter, squirrel dreys reveal themselves in the tree canopy. They’ve been there all along — just screened by trees’ leafy crowns for much of the year. Dreys are shaggy masses of leaves nestled against a tree trunk or cupped in a fork o … (read more)

The Outside Story: Bohemian waxwings, intrepid winter wanderers

Walking along a dirt road last winter, I heard a collection of pleasant, sputtering trills coming from a stand of conifers and hardwoods nearby. I’m used to the winter conversation of chickadees around feeder and woods, the cawing of crows and blue jays i … (read more)

The Outside Story: Bark helps trees weather winter

When I think about winter survival, my mind first goes to wildlife: field mice curling up in nests, chickadees flocking to bird feeders, and amphibians burrowing into the mud.

White-footed mice are just seeking a warm house

During winter, I often hear gnawing and the scurrying of little feet inside the walls of our house. Mice have taken shelter in our old farmhouse again.

The Outside Story: The evergreen Christmas fern

Tromping through our woods in December in search of a Christmas tree, I often notice an evergreen fern, one of the few green plants on the forest floor this time of year, other than young conifers. An easy fern to identify, it grows in fountain-like clump … (read more)

The Outside Story: Keeping winter coats clean

Standing on the berm of a small pond, I watch the resident beaver leave its lodge, a silhouetted nose moving through the water.

The Outside Story: Autumn migration: Dragons on the move

The great annual movements of fall include monarch butterflies winging toward Mexico, whales heading to the Caribbean to give birth, and multitudes of birds in the autumn skies. There’s another migration this season that often goes unnoticed by casual obs … (read more)

The Outside Story: Late blooming flowers are important to feed native bees

As the height-of-summer floral abundance fades, goldenrods and asters fill the landscape with hits of yellow, purple, pink, and white. Beyond the beauty they provide, these late bloomers are a critical food source for several native species of wild bees.

The Outside Story: The tale of a lake tsunami

The sharpest contrast between rivers and lakes is in water movement. While rivers flow inexorably downhill, lake water movement is more subtle.

The Outside Story: Fascinating adaptations of frogs

Frogs have hopped about Earth since before the time of the dinosaurs, and it shows. Celebrated for their amphibious lifestyle and cacophonous choruses, the long arc of frog evolution has yielded other awesome and efficient adaptations in organs from their … (read more)

The Outside Story: The solar eclipse

In the cosmic dance of heavenly bodies, no phenomenon possesses the drama of a solar eclipse, when the moon passes directly between the sun and earth.

The Outside Story: Maple sugaring adapts to climate change

Boiling maple sap into syrup is a time-honored tradition in the Northeast, to the olfactory delight of anyone who has spent time in a steamy sugarhouse while inhaling the sweet maple scent of the season.

The Outside Story: The complicated lives of conifer seeds

My yard is full of eastern white pine trees, and every three years or so, it is full of pine cones. This is one of those years. Pine cones have fallen all over the yard, the sidewalk, the driveway.

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