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.
It happens on a warm June evening: in the darkening field near my house, I notice a brief flicker of light. Then another. And another.
Humans often ascribe traits that we admire to other animals. I’d like to add another candidate to this list of animal virtues: a pigeon’s ardor.
A winter walk in the forest reveals a flurry of wildlife activity that often goes unnoticed during other times of the year.
Have you noticed the cheery evergreen sprig with pearly berries, currently perched over the doorways of Yankee traditionalists and those desperate to be kissed?
One notable example is the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect easily transported in firewood, which has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in the United States since it was introduced to Michigan from Asia in 2002.
Swift and apparently silent, a lone bat traces the contours of the woods’ edge at dusk, floating through canopy and meadow.
During a late summer walk, I noticed that the common milkweed in our back field is becoming not-so-common.
Among summer’s many sweet offerings are wild berries. And among these, blueberries are my favorite.
As spring warms the water, a turtle, covered by leaves and mud at the bottom of a wetland where she hibernated for the winter, awakens.
If you’ve never seen — or heard of — the southern bog lemming, you’re not alone.
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.
I’d not known these flowers before we moved to this place, some 18 years ago.
On a cold November 2020 day, my daughter Lucy and I detected a strange floral scent in our woods.
Measuring only 6 inches in length and weighing less than an ounce, downy woodpeckers are the smallest of North America’s 22 native woodpecker species.
