Nature Watch
Art and words by Nona Estrin Foggy August mornings with the last days of early bird song. The stage is now being set for the next season. Alternate-leaved dogwood berries join many…
Nature Watch, July 22, 2026
Tiny but mighty, hover flies are among Vermont's most important pollinators. A closer look reveals their surprising beauty.…
Nature Watch, June 24, 2026
Did you catch the brilliant white of flowering blackberry canes this year? You could easily miss it in the handful of days before pounding…
Nature Watch, June 3, 2026
Most of us have not seen this tree-dwelling amphibian but may have heard its short trill from nearby deciduous trees. The gray tree frog…
Nature Watch, May 6, 2026
Flocks of migrating sparrows, finches, and mixed groups of black birds made me aware again of last summer’s severe drought. There had been what…
Nature Watch, April 15, 2026
Spring light in the rich hardwoods seems to reflect and intensify color now before the sugar maple leaves pop their buds. Blue cohosh is…
Nature Watch, Mar. 18, 2026
The vernal equinox is a week away, and sudden change is the ruling mode. In the river valleys, bare ground, but on the hills…
Nature Watch, Mar. 4, 2026
Cross-country skiing, even a quick out and back, before the sun goes down, makes the day just the right shape. Blue shadows creep in…
Nature Watch, Feb. 18, 2026
February, hands down my favorite month, loved for its light; cross-country skiing, sledding, and other winter sports; fried lake perch (available some days at…
Nature Watch, Jan. 21, 2026
Now, in spite of how rarely we see the sun, its momentum, slowly building, is the star of the natural-world show. I’ve often made…
Nature Watch, Dec. 17, 2025
Snow, in its many forms and shapes! Puffs repose on the shadbush branches. Hanging, fingered snow-fields somehow hold to the balsam branches. And in…
Nature Watch, Dec. 3, 2025
Those little meatloaves of the natural world — voles, mice, and shrews — are scarce in many places this year. Reports of owls hunting…
Nature Watch, Nov. 19, 2025
A complex mystery, well worth observing at this time of year, is the relationship between what we collectively call “hunter moths” and witch hazel. This…
Nature Watch, Nov. 5, 2025
Most of the migrating sparrows have passed through on their way south. Yesterday a colorful chaos of robins stripped the winterberry bushes of their…
Nature Watch, Oct. 15, 2025
A magical jumble of notes as ruby-crowned kinglets passed through our area today. Made me smile! But many fewer white-throated sparrows this year as the…
Nature Watch, Sept. 17, 2025
I’m away for a couple of weeks but dreaming of the bounty of fall wildflowers at this time of year. Even with a drought,…
Nature Watch, Sept. 3, 2025
With nights still relatively short, beavers are working into the daylight hours to get in green branches for winter food and to shore up…
Nature Watch: Aug. 20, 2025
Hot! Hot! Hot! Small streams and brooks drying up, and although the woods are at least 10 degrees cooler than open areas, searing heat…
Nature Watch, July 23, 2025
Now is the week I make my summer-preoccupied, too-busy self a promise. For the next several days, at dawn and evening, I’ll step outside.…
Nature Watch, July 9, 2025
Those heady months of May and June, with intoxicating apple blossoms, then early, mid, and late lilacs, wild grape flowers, peonies, roses, and now…
Nature Watch, June 25, 2025
White Queen Anne’s lace-type flowered invasives line our roads and walkways in June and have come to look almost normal. But of course they…