Mastering the air
August 31, 2014 - Most of the local birds have been silent, but the Wood Pewees, both young and mature, are starting to find their voices...
Read the Full Post »
Time and change
August 30, 2014 - This was a bike-trek day, and one of my favorite stops en route is by a meditation garden created and maintained by the...
Read the Full Post »
The beginning of the end
August 29, 2014 - While my fern identification skills are not too good, they are improving, and this is a species I know pretty well. Hay-...
Read the Full Post »
The underwings arrive
August 28, 2014 - Underwings, so named as a group because their hind wings are a complete counter to the patterning of their front wings,...
Read the Full Post »
Nearly done
August 27, 2014 - Summer at the lake is rapidly drawing to a close—an earlier close than usual because Labor Day occurs at the earliest po...
Read the Full Post »
In a patch of Jewelweed
August 26, 2014 - In 1991, University of Vermont physiological ecologist Bernd Heinrich published In a Patch of Fireweed, a splendid memoi...
Read the Full Post »
Poke-ing along
August 25, 2014 - Poke is truly a noxious weed with the capacity to absolutely overrun an area. I should know: one of my self-appointed ta...
Read the Full Post »
Butterfly bush as advertised
August 24, 2014 - Butterfly bush is supposed to be a floriferous lepidopteran magnet, and in the plant ads and, no doubt, at White Flower...
Read the Full Post »
Southbound soon
August 23, 2014 - Our dump—OK, transfer station—is located in a sag atop a series of rocky hills that crown our little town, and every tim...
Read the Full Post »
Deadly delights
August 21, 2014 - It wasn't that my "voyage of discovery" today wasn't filled with the usual intriguing finds, but my trek to Ell Pond yes...
Read the Full Post »
Reptilian cataracts
August 21, 2014 - Today's trek took me through two states, one swamp, several upland forests, and, finally, to the rocky outcrops of Ell P...
Read the Full Post »
Harbinger plant
August 20, 2014 - One of the fixtures in the newspaper column I've been writing weekly since February 1978 is a constant searching for har...
Read the Full Post »
Wood pile refuge
August 19, 2014 - Sometimes I have to walk for miles to get a decent photograph; today, I had to walk about 30 or so feet. That would take...
Read the Full Post »
Odonates... it's what's for dinner
August 18, 2014 - The first Dragonhunter—the uber-predator of odonates—arrived more than two weeks ago, but ever since I spotted the drago...
Read the Full Post »
Gone fishin'
August 17, 2014 - The house was quiet early, so I decided to get outside while the gettin' was good. Overnight, by the millpond, we clearl...
Read the Full Post »
The aster parade
August 16, 2014 - The first of the wild asters have started to bloom. There are many different species around here, the premier blooms of...
Read the Full Post »
Along came a spider
August 15, 2014 - Today was a very strange day outdoors. The morning dawned chilly, mid-50s chilly, and no sooner did it warm up than the...
Read the Full Post »
Hurricane Duck
August 14, 2014 - If this were a screenshot from the Weather Channel website, it would be accompanied by lurid red and black letters and f...
Read the Full Post »
After the deluge
August 13, 2014 - We're in the throes of yet-another long dry spell, during which the vernal pools have evaporated and the millpond waterf...
Read the Full Post »
Madonna and child
August 12, 2014 - One of my early-evening tasks is to walk down the long driveway to my neighbor's house, and, in her absence, feed her Ma...
Read the Full Post »
Monarchs at work
August 10, 2014 - I've been trying to get to the Miner Preserve to conduct amphibian, dragonfly, butterfly, and anything else surveys roug...
Read the Full Post »
An early hint of autumn
August 09, 2014 - With the afternoon actually trending towards the warm side, I headed up to the lake for a swim. It's been a funny summer...
Read the Full Post »
Green fields with the pros
August 09, 2014 - I've long known about the Connecticut Botanical Society and the terrific walks they sponsor almost every week during the...
Read the Full Post »
Old home berries
August 08, 2014 - Some 40 years ago, I lived on Jamestown, an island in Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. It was a splendid place to be, an...
Read the Full Post »
Now you don't have a prayer
August 07, 2014 - In advance of a walk I was asked to join, I decided to do a scouting trek to a familiar bit of real estate, the Nature C...
Read the Full Post »
A twelve-spotted jewel
August 06, 2014 - In the past, my daily walks often took me through my neighbor's hay field, but once it fell into the clutches of a devel...
Read the Full Post »
A very young conehead
August 05, 2014 - Long before the "Coneheads" sketch made its debut on Saturday Night Live, and certainly well before the movie of the sam...
Read the Full Post »
Rattlesnake flowers
August 04, 2014 - When we first moved into our woods some 30 years ago, I found several patches of Rattlesnake Plantain, a diminutive fore...
Read the Full Post »
The snowberries arrive
August 03, 2014 - The hummingbird feeder is alive with both adult and juvenile hummers, and with the pickerel weed still at peak, I've bee...
Read the Full Post »
Don't blame the goldenrod
August 02, 2014 - Another kind of season is about to begin, and for many unfortunates, this will be the worst of times. I speak, of course...
Read the Full Post »
Another kind of aerial terror
August 01, 2014 - For the past couple of weeks, I've been scanning the millpond skies for the arrival of one particular species of dragonf...
Read the Full Post »
|