Fountain Grove

Stretching north from the junction of the Grand River and Locust Creek, the Fountain Grove Conservation Area covers over 7100 acres of north...

Horseback Lessons

During my late pre-teen years, my friends and I would often follow a large creek into the wild and rural lands adjacent to our subdivision. ...

Morning Serenade

This morning dawned cold and gray in mid Missouri, not a hint of spring in the air. Yet, as I walked to work, I was serenaded by a host of ...

Night Flight

In past blogs, I have expressed my love of flying and my conviction that it is the best way to appreciate our natural landscape. Flying at n...

The Silent Brigade

On our last afternoon at Longboat Key, a large flock of red-breasted mergansers moved south on the calm waters of Sarasota Bay. Demonstratin...

Florida's Dry Prairie

Before white settlers reached Florida, vast prairielands covered the region north and west of Lake Okeechobee. Having developed on flat terr...

Birding Alligator Alley

Heading down to see our son in Miami, we crossed Alligator Alley, the hundred-mile stretch of I-75 between Naples and Greater Ft. Lauderdale...

Storms and Sea Birds

On our first day in Florida, a line of powerful thunderstorms pushed across the Gulf of Mexico. By the following morning, the tail of this ...

Escape to Fragrance

Last week, a two-hour flight took us from the cold, dry air of the American Midwest to the warm, humid air of South Florida. More than a ch...

Bosque del Apache

Established in 1939, the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge covers 57,000 acres along the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. A mosaic...

Desert Snow

A deep trough of low pressure has moved in across Southern California and its counter-clockwise winds are pulling in moisture from both the ...

Reunion at Guanella

Guanella Pass, in Colorado, is a high, broad ridge that connects the Mt. Evans massif with the Continental Divide. This windswept ridge, 11...

Man and Monogamy

On this Hallmark Holiday of romantic love, it is a good time to ponder the nature of monogamy. Anyone old enough to have experienced the pha...

The Cretaceous Period

The Cretaceous Period (135 to 65 million years ago) is the last Period of the Mesozoic Era, the Age of Dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus rex ruled th...

Winter of Superlatives

This winter season has been characterized by a series of weather extremes across the country. Crippling ice storms in December, a massive s...

Dusk at the Feeder

On cold winter days, our backyard feeder, filled with black sunflower seed, gets a wide variety of visitors. Cardinals, chickadees, titmice,...

The Chiricahuas

The Madrean Archipelago is a group of mountain ranges that rise above desert landscape between the Colorado Plateau and the Sierra Madre Occ...

Kettle Lakes

The Pleistocene glaciers created numerous lakes across the North Country. In many cases, the glaciers scoured lake basins from the underlyin...

Vanguard of Spring

Driving back to Missouri yesterday, I encountered several large flocks of snow geese in the broad, Kaskaskia Valley of central Illinois; one...

Floodscape

A visit to Ohio over the past few days took us along I-70, crossing Illinois and Indiana. From the Mississippi eastward, all of the rivers ...

Butcher Bird

Mention predatory birds and most people think of hawks, owls, falcons and eagles. Few would include shrikes on that list but these robin-si...

Tertiary Terrain

The Tertiary Period, 65 to 2 million years ago, extends from the demise of the dinosaurs to the onset of the Pleistocene Ice Age. Bedrock f...

Roaming Season

Late winter is the mating season for most of our non-hibernating mammals. Cottontails, raccoons, opossums, mink, river otters, bobcats, lynx...

George

In my childhood, travel was an annual excursion on I-75 (either to Lake Erie or Florida) and nature was yard work, a trip to the zoo or thir...