River Otter Tracks and Sign: The Basics
Learn the basics of river otter tracks and sign: footprints, trails, slides, scats, etc. This social member of the weasel family delights the tracker.
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Beaver: appreciating nature’s other engineer
Learn to identify beaver sign, how they change the landscape, how they live, and why sharing the land with them is crucial for sustainability.
Continue reading →Witch hazel: Flowers, fruit capsules, and reproductive strategy
Witch hazel’s beautiful fall flowers and fruit capsules, interesting reproductive strategy, and unanswered questions.
Continue reading →Woolly oak galls, Callirhytis lanata
This must be a banner year in Massachusetts for woolly oak galls produced by the wasp Callirhytis lanata, because we naturalists-but-not-bug-experts who’ve never noticed them in past years, have been finding these quarter-inch, buff colored pompoms scattered all over the … Continue reading →
Hickory nuts: Rodent sign
While out foraging for shagbark hickory nuts (Carya ovata) in Bolton, MA this morning, I noticed abundant sign of other animals doing the same. Near a beaver wetland in a mixed oak / white pine / red maple / black … Continue reading →
Puffin Watching in Maine
I am a self-proclaimed homebody, and Maine is about the farthest I’ve traveled for a birding expedition. What can I say, I love New England. We took one of Cap’n Fish’s Puffin Cruises from Boothbay Harbor, Maine, to Eastern Egg … Continue reading →
Tracking Bobcats in Massachusetts
I love wildlife, even predators. Yes, it’s true, despite the fact that I keep small livestock which are vulnerable to predation by a long list of wild animals that thrive around my backyard farm, I enjoy seeing them, even on … Continue reading →