by Ted Watt
It was January, with two feet of cold crisp powder on the ground. The day was bright and sunny. The 5th and 6th grades at our small rural, hill-town school had been studying life sciences. Educators and students were focusing on animals and the many varied ways they are adapted, both physically and behaviorally, to living in their environment. We decided to take advantage of the perfect winter day and headed out to see what we could learn about how animals live in winter from the signs and tracks they left behind.
by Tom Litwin
During migration season this past fall researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, using NEXRAD weather radar, tracked approximately 4 billion birds migrating from Canada into the U.S. and 4.7 million birds leaving the U.S. for the tropics. Clearly one strategy for dealing with New England weather is to leave it behind. But other species’ strategies have traded the benefits and perils posed by thousands of miles of travel for the benefits and perils of northern winters.
by Joshua Rose
Once upon a time, it was called Bri-Mar Stables and described as “a quaint equestrian facility nestled in the heart of Hadley … providing a welcoming environment for those passionate about all things equine.” The property had a barn at the top of a hill on Moody Bridge Road and a track for riding out back near the Fort River. The farm eventually closed and was sold to a developer. The developer was allegedly caught illegally filling wetlands and offered a choice: Pay fines that would erode their profit margins or sell the land to the government. They chose the latter.
By Kari Blood
One of the reasons many of us love living in the Valley is being able to see wildlife around us. But those sightings will become increasingly rare if humans don’t take bold steps to slow the loss of species around the world. Scientists are sounding the alarm not only about the climate crisis but also about the inextricably linked biodiversity crisis.
By Joshua Rose
A few months ago, headlines flared that Peter Kaestner had seen his 10,000th bird species. This could have been anticlimactic, as Kaestner has been renowned for years among birders for traveling worldwide and seeing more species than anyone.
However, the feat gained drama just before Kaestner’s milestone when Jason Mann, so non-renowned that few birders had ever heard of him, suddenly revealed that he, too, was approaching 10,000 species seen, and even claimed to have reached the milestone mere hours before Kaestner did. Mann ultimately was found to have padded his list a bit and withdrew his claim, but for a while, the title of world’s top birder unexpectedly became a competition.
By Rachel Quimby
One of my favorite books from childhood is P.D. Eastman’s “Big Dog, Little Dog,” the story of two bi-pedal pooches who are best friends. But Fred is tall, and Ted is short; Fred drives slowly and Ted drives fast; Ted plays the tuba, and Fred plays the flute. One day they visit a ski resort together, and that night, discover that neither can sleep in his own bed. I won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say it’s a compelling tale about how opposites don’t just complement each other, their differences can serve as a bond. In other words: opposites attract. And every third grader who’s used a magnet to stick artwork to a refrigerator knows it.
By Lawrence J. Winship
February in New England brings longer days, uncertain weather … and seed catalogs! We gardeners pour over highly anticipated pages of glossy photos offering the promise of gorgeous fruits and flowers, all for the small price of a seed packet. Seed companies work hard to provide reliable uniformity. Their seeds will readily germinate, rapidly and with a guaranteed percentage. Their promises will come true — plant a radish, get a radish! Many are said to be disease resistant and adapted for local conditions of soil and climate. We take for granted that the horticulturists and farmers behind the catalogs know their trade, turning out crops of seed for us each year. More and more, many of us save our own seeds; taking the responsibility for seed quality into our own hands.
By David Spector
Most vertebrates — the large group of animals that includes humans — have many features in common, but some oddball groups have lost some of those characteristics. For example, snakes have lost their limbs, but they retain most of the other features typical of the larger group. Some of the strangest of these animals, having lost or altered many of the usual vertebrate characteristics, are seahorses. Seahorses are named for their horse-like head shape, one of many distinctive traits, a few of which I compare with those of other vertebrates.
By Monya Relles
Over the summer, I read and enjoyed “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us” by Ed Yong. One of Yong’s central theses is that animal senses are so different from our own that it’s almost impossible to imagine the ways animals could be thinking, feeling, and perceiving the world.Yong calls the bubble of the world that an animal can perceive (through hearing, sight, electromagnetic senses, or senses even stranger) an animal’s umwelt. That umwelt, Yong argues, is often entirely foreign to our own.
By Katie Koerten
I’ve written in the Earth Matters column twice before about the magic of the color blue in nature. First, in “It’s not easy being blue in nature,” I wrote about how rare blue is in nature due to its relative costliness to produce. Then I described the two pigments found in bird eggs in “Cracking the mystery of how birds’ eggs are blue.” Today I want to share with you what made me fall in love with blue in the first place: chicory.
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax