By Katie Koerten
Even if you love winter like me, you’re probably also heartened by the signs of spring that will be popping up soon. Skunk cabbage flowers are already poking up through the mud; red maples are swelling and will bloom soon. Red-winged blackbirds can be heard and turkey vultures are once again soaring through our skies. One early bloom I’ll be looking for in the next few weeks is one I overlooked for many years: northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin). Recently it’s become a friend I eagerly look for in mid-April.
By Joshua Rose
Birdhouses seem simple. Because people cut down dead and dying trees, cavity-dwelling birds can’t find enough nest sites. If we put up birdhouses, those birds can nest there instead, and we all live happily ever after. Right?
By Michael Dover
The germ of this column came from reading Michael Pollan’s “The Botany of Desire,” which shows the reciprocal relationship between people and domesticated plants: The plants meet human desires and humans propagate the plants widely. My immediate reaction was, “Of course! Dogs and cats!” The idea was helped along when a wonderful dog joined our family.
By Christine Hatch
When I fly, I get a window seat whenever I can. I press my face against the glass, camera ready, and spend the flight marveling at the shapes in the landscape, how the surfaces turn to art, how places I know from maps are transformed by the light and are so, so small.
By David Spector
As birdwatchers travel we keep track of birds we encounter, especially those new to us. And when we travel, we want information about finding such birds.
The Massachusetts birdwatcher visiting California wants to know when and where to experience snowy plovers, tufted puffins, western screech-owls, western bluebirds, western tanagers and other western birds; the California birdwatcher on an exchange visit to Massachusetts would want information about piping plovers, Atlantic puffins, eastern screech-owls, eastern bluebirds, scarlet tanagers and other northeastern species.
By Lawrence J. Winship
What is the wisdom shown by “wise trees”? Is it perhaps that they appear to cease striving and simply endure because growth is made impossible by the “sure” arrival of cold, of scarce and pale light, and of water frozen solid? Or might the verse call to mind the “wisdom” of genetic information encoded in the tree’s DNA?
By John Sinton
When I was fly fishing for pink salmon some years ago in the Pacific Northwest, I hooked an enormous steelhead, which is a sea-run rainbow trout. That steelhead was twice the size of the five-pound salmon I’d caught, but I wondered why one was called salmon and the other, trout.
By Tom Litwin
On my desk is an old Kodak photo of my Dad and me, standing in front of our home. With snow piled high, we had just finished digging out our driveway — my snow shovel proudly displayed. On the edge of the photograph is stamped 1961, so I was 10 years old. While working at my desk I sometimes drift off into the photo with memories of sledding, snowball fights, snow huts, maple syrup on snow, skiing and coveted school snow days. There are few weather events like snowstorms that are as intertwined with our culture and lifestyle, yet they have humble beginnings.
By Christine Hatch
When the bulldozers come to the field site you’ve affectionately spent five years measuring and studying in minute detail, it feels like someone is tearing up your living room and smearing mud on the couch. As a geologist, it is also a rare and wonderful opportunity to lift off over 100 years of human land use and look underneath, and back in time to what once was.
By Laurie Sanders
If you’re interested in natural history, the Connecticut River Valley is a great place to live. The combination of geology, hydrology, human history and climate create a remarkable diversity of habitats. In Northampton, where most of my conservation work has focused, you can explore 40 different types of natural communities — from rocky summits and cliffs to open marshes, floodplain forests and rivers.
Share this page with friends!
Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax