Tornado Alley

North America is the tornado capital of the world and the majority of these twisters occur in the Southeastern and Central U.S. Tornadoes ...

Bean Trees

The redbuds are blooming in Columbia. These small trees, festooned with pink-purple flowers, are used as ornamentals throughout the eastern...

Coming Ashore

Life evolved in the ocean 3.6 billion years ago but it would be another 3.2 billion years before plants and animals colonized the land. It w...

Trilling Toads

After a week of warm, rainy weather, the toads were calling last night. Their high-pitched, musical trills indicated that they were America...

The Rift Valley

The Rift Valley of East Africa is the southern end of a 4000 mile rift that begins in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon and extends southward thro...

Man and his Lawn

The lawn, pride of the American homeowner, is not a natural landscape. Lawns are generally a blend of hybrid grasses and, unfortunately, are...

Early Birds

In birding lingo, a summer resident is a bird that arrives in spring, breeds and departs in the fall for southern climes or lower elevations...

From Teays to Ohio

During most of the Cenozoic Era, the Teays River and its tributaries drained a large area of the eastern U.S. Heading in the mountains of no...

Hysteria in the Suburbs

As March blends with April, the hysterical call of the flicker greets the day. Not content with the sound of his own voice, this frenzied w...

Early Bloomers

The late winter and early spring flowers are the ones we appreciate the most. They bring the first splash of color to a bleak winter landsc...

The Hualapai Travesty

So the Hualapai Indian Tribe has dedicated their glass-bottomed walkway over the rim of the Grand Canyon, a marvel of engineering and a disg...

The Colorado Plateau

Harboring some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet, the Colorado Plateau stretches across western Colorado, northwestern New Mexic...

Love Birds

By mid March most of our resident songbirds have paired off and are engaged in courtship behavior. As far as we know, they have no personal ...

The Invisible Chorus

The ice has melted and western chorus frogs are calling from the wetlands of mid Missouri. These small tree frogs, usually under 1.5 inches ...

White on Green

Just as the landscape was starting to green, two inches of heavy, wet snow cover the lawns and shrubs this morning; only clumps of wild onio...

Cows, Pigs and Whales

One of the most fascinating events in evolutionary history is the divergence of whales from terrestrial mammals during the Eocene. Recent DN...

Nature's Gliders

Fifty or more turkey vultures circled above the Hinkson Creek valley, in south Columbia, last evening. No doubt enjoying the balmy condition...

Evolution and the Pleistocene

The Pleistocene Epoch, commonly referred to as the Ice Age, was just the latest of many glacial periods in our planet's history. Stretch...

Spring Fever

Spring fever has spread across the country....literally. High temperatures will be in the 70s from California to Denver to Washington DC. ...

Give Me Solitude

When hiking, I prefer solitude and wild places. While I appreciate the role that nature centers, State Parks and urban greenbelts play in r...

The Low Country Owl

While great horned owls usually hunt on upland meadows and crop fields, the barred owl favors bottomland forest, wooded swamps and stream va...

Changing Sides

As the Permian Period dawned, some 270 million years ago, the Iapetus Ocean, predecessor of the Atlantic, was closing and the continents beg...

San Luis Sandhills

The Rocky Mountain sandhill cranes winter in New Mexico. Come February, they begin to migrate toward their summer range in Wyoming, Montana...

Pockets of Canada

As the Pleistocene Glaciers pushed into the American Midwest, the vegetation zones shifted southward in advance of the ice. The periglacial ...

Muscatatuck

During my years in Cincinnati, I made frequent trips to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge, in southern Indiana. Located a few miles east...

Greenland and Iceland

Halfway through the Cenozoic, the Era in which we live, a broad land bridge connected Europe and North America. Then, about 30 million years...

Avian Acrobats

Ever since I took up birding, more than 30 years ago, nuthatches have been one of my favorite groups of birds. The white-breasted nuthatch w...

Eagle Bluffs

One of my favorite places in all of Missouri, Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area stretches along the Missouri River floodplain, southwest of Col...

The Permian Swath

The Permian Period, the last geologic division of the Paleozoic Era, stretched from 270 to 225 million years ago. This Period is known prim...

The First Robin

The annual rite of looking for the first robin of spring is both a silly tradition and a sad commentary on the knowledge that most Americans...

Fickle March

After a long, cold winter, we look forward to March, the first calender month of spring. Yet, the spring equinox is still three weeks away a...