In just 20 minutes, bone-dry moss can return to full vigor. This resilience of mosses is mostly due to their amazing ability to live thriftily and within their means.
A slight breeze through the treetops initiated a cascade of snow plops onto the trailand down my neck. That got me hiking again. As I pushed aside a drooping branch, the movement released some of the firs wonderful perfume
Beavers are not my favorite animal. Their drab, oily fur, plodding manner, and lumpy design dont inspire the same feelings of wonder in my heart as a cheery little chickadee
As seed-eating specialists, finches are among the most strictly vegetarian birds of the world. While many small birds eat seeds, most of them also feed insects to their young.
We heaved our backpacks, loaded with high-energy foods, waterproof tents and warm clothing, onto the ferry dock just as the gray dawn was beginning to break.
One of my most vivid childhood memories from Iowas corn country is watching clouds of monarch butterflies dance around the milkweed patch by our back steps and finding caterpillars on the leaves. My brother and I raised them, as many kids do.
Lobster mushrooms are a delight for beginning mycophiles, since they and their hosts are easy to identify. They are on the short list of mushrooms that Ill eat without expert help
The mystery came and went all afternoon, interrupting our discussions as we all tried to get a better look at it. Black and white bands on the thread-like legs
Wed just dipped our feet into Cap Creek, a spring-fed tributary of the upper Namekagon River, and that cold water was part of what drew us here. The cold water is also what draws native brook trout here
Lunch bag in hand, I hurried up the Cable Natural History Museums front walk, ready for another day at the office. On a whim, I detoured over to one of our native plant gardens
Returns re-catching a previously banded bird at least three months later are rare in the banding world, but they provide a wealth of information. From these recaptured birds, scientists have learned about the incredible 24,000 mile round-trip mig
Bogs are a unique, almost alien landscape, with a charm all their own. Funny plants, few trees, and a wonderful, squelchy, squashy, shaky, shivery, sucking substrate can turn adults back into giggly, wiggly kids
The old turtle scraped at the sand with her naily toes as the kids gathered in a wide circle around her. Sometimes I get questions about dinosaurs on field trips, but they dont fit into the Museums focus on Northern Wisconsin species.
Fiddlehead ferns! Their unique pattern of emergence, called circinate vernation, protects the tender growing tip of the frond within the tightly curled bundle of leaves.
Professional birders, and the serious guidebooks, do describe the song more reservedly as zee zee zee zoo zee. Other folks, somewhere in between on the scale of birding humor, think trees, trees, murmuring trees"
A non-technological indication of the hummers impending arrival is the return of yellow-bellied sapsuckers. Sapsuckers squeaky-toy calls filter through the forest about two weeks before the first hummingbird buzzes in
With the fluctuation in the numbers of charismatic megafauna came ups and downs for vegetation on the island, too. After the huge wolf crash due to parvovirus in the early 1980
Spring is here. With it comes young and hopeful life decked out in many styles of tuxedoes and rainbows of colorful gowns. Everyone must sing, perform, defend, watch, or choose according to their own, individual, natures. Who have you been admiring
Patchworks of emerald, olive, and chartreuse moss draped over soft, sunken logs. Hummocks and swales in the forest floor told tales of large trees, long fallen.
