Earth Matters

Calculus of the seasons

By David Spector

Next Thursday, March 20, is the day known in the northern hemisphere as the vernal equinox, when day and night are approximately equal in length. According to our calendars, this is the day spring begins. (In the southern hemisphere, it is the first day of autumn. Some have suggested the less ambiguous “Northward equinox” for this date and “Southward equinox” for its September equivalent.

Seeing a nocturnal hunter by day

By David Spector

Is the barred owl a common bird here in western Massachusetts? The answer depends on how the word “common” is understood.

Native bees: The “other” pollinators we depend on

By Tom Sullivan

In the last few years we’ve been hearing a lot about the loss of honeybees and their hives. A looming pollination crisis is stretching across the globe. If honeybees disappear, we’ll face an historic calamity threatening many of the seed-derived foods we need to survive.

Parenting and climate change

By Casey Beebe

I have a dream of children who think all electricity comes from the sun, of children who are just used to composting toilets. I see hordes of children who know exactly where their food comes from, I imagine children who don’t know what a plastic grocery bag was.

Where are the frogs in winter?

By Patty O’Donnell

It was Sept. — the day after the autumnal equinox. I stood at the edge of my garden pond, counting the frogs that had recently been drawn to my very small shore; adult and juvenile green frogs, and juvenile leopard frogs. This day I counted six. Every fall I have observed that the green frogs seem to get browner this time of year.

A winter tracking expedition

By Ted Watt

I parked at the top of the dead-end dirt road, strapped on my snowshoes, and started up the old woods road toward the cliffs. I had been here before but not for a month or more. It was late January, a sparkling blue day, temperatures in the mid-20s. The snow was perfect, fresh and light with a good deep base; not like some of our recent winters. I soon reached the hemlock grove with needles and branches littering the snow below, each one nipped off by sharp incisors. There were two deep furrows in the light snow, leading from the nearby jumble of rocky outcrops and cliffs, where the heavy animals had pushed through to get to their favorite winter food. Cliffs and hemlocks — the perfect winter habitat for porcupines

NIMBY: Self-interest or the canary in the coal mine?

By Michael Dover

“Not in my backyard!” That’s the supposed cry of people who raise objections to proposed projects in their neighborhoods. The expression has been used so often, it has spawned its own acronym: NIMBY. Of course, it has rarely if ever been used by these folks. Rather, it comes up when proponents of these projects want to characterize their opponents’ positions. As is usually the case, labeling opponents is a shorthand way of dismissing their objections without addressing them, and NIMBY is no exception.

Borrowed from nature: Modern foods, ancient roots

By LAWRENCE J. WINSHIP Gazette Contributing Writer Published in print: Saturday, December 7, 2013 Another Thanksgiving is behind us. Many of us were fortunate enough to celebrate with family and […]

Borrowed from nature: Modern foods, ancient roots

By Lawrence J. Winship

Another Thanksgiving is behind us. Many of us were fortunate enough to celebrate with family and friends while feasting on the descendants of Native American foods. To name just a few, turkey, squash, succotash, cranberries, wild rice and potatoes all originated in the Americas. Brought from the wild into human food culture many millennia ago, much of our food comes from plants domesticated by the passage of seed, tuber and rhizome from hand to hand, season after season. We are literally at the receiving end of a long line of gardeners and farmers who sowed, cared for and harvested crops thousands of times — for themselves, of course, but also for us. Ancient farmers reached into the natural world to “borrow” food plants, and their choices and actions shaped our food destiny.

White-faced hornets: Time for a change of image?

By Ted Watt

Right now we’re safe. Most of them are dead, killed by the heavy frosts of late autumn. And the queen is dormant in a carefully constructed chamber under a log or rock in the forest. But next April she’ll emerge and begin a new nest. She was fertilized in the fall, so she’ll lay eggs and raise the first workers of her colony, then turn over all the jobs in the colony to them except for egg laying. You’ve probably seen them — white-faced hornets.