Nature's Year

As we approach the end of another human calendar year, we realize that it has no direct relationship to the solar cycle, which defines natur...

A Snowless Autumn

One of the joys of living in Missouri is its location within a major North American flyway.  Each spring and fall, large flocks of waterfowl...

Spring in December

Partial sunshine and mild air pushed into central Missouri today.  Down at the Forum Nature Area, it looked like winter but felt more like s...

Humans & Vegetables

Childrens' distaste for vegetables is both well known and a common theme in advertising and entertainment.  Yet, we must acknowledge tha...

Boreal Owls

Boreal owls are small raptors that inhabit mixed conifer-aspen forests across Alaska, Canada and northern Eurasia; their range also extends ...

December Gray

A milky-gray dome stretched above central Missouri today, diffusing the sunlight and dulling whatever color is left in the mid December land...

Birding the Wastewater Wetlands

Columbia, Missouri, has a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly wastewater treatment facility, consisting of a chain of wetlands in the lower Perch...

America's Lucrative Pheasant

Native to Asia, ring-necked pheasants were introduced to North America in 1881; initially bred in captivity and released on private hunting ...

The Suet Platoon

As the dark, cold days of December envelop Missouri, I add suet to our backyard handouts.  While the chunks of high calorie food do not incr...

Flooding in a Parched Landscape

Over the past week, an atmospheric trough developed off the California coast, sweeping Pacific moisture across that parched landscape.  With...

White-Crowned Sparrows

Summer residents of Alaska, northern Canada and the alpine tundra of North America's western mountains, white-crowned sparrows winter ac...

Cheap Oil & Climate Change

Now that oil prices have dropped to their lowest point in years, Conservative pundits are predicting the demise of clean, renewable sources ...

Fishers of the Forest

Fishers are large members of the mustelid (weasel) family; second in size only to the river otter, male fishers may weight up to 13 pounds. ...

Environmentalism & Religion

Several days ago, the PBS News Hour reported that the Communist Party of China is beginning to soften its stance on the expression of religi...

The Nature of Hanging Valleys

A hanging valley is generally defined as a stream or glacial valley that ends abruptly atop the steep wall of a deeper valley or sea cliff. ...

The Gila River

Covering more than 58,000 square miles, the watershed of the Gila River includes most of Arizona south of the Mogollon Rim.  The river itsel...

Pioneers of Enlightenment

On this annual American holiday of Thanksgiving, we stop to ponder our good fortune (however meager or extravagant that might be) and to tha...

Raptors in the Cold Sunshine

Clear skies and cold air enticed me down to the wooded hills and open farmlands south and east of Columbia this morning.  Besides, a steady ...

Refuge Closed for Killing

On this cold, gray, November morning in central Missouri, I headed down to Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area on the Missouri River floodplain, ...

The Great Appalachian Valley

The Great Appalachian Valley of North America, a series of topographic valleys separated by low divides, stretches for more than 1200 miles,...

Two Cities, Two Owls

Great horned owls are the nocturnal avian predators along the Colorado Front Range, feasting on prey as large as skunks, geese and raccoons....

Snow Disaster in Buffalo

The poster child for lake-effect snow events struck South Buffalo, New York, this week, dropping up to six feet of snow.  According to local...

Pipeline to Oblivion

Political, corporate and public support for the Keystone Pipeline is a direct repudiation of efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption acros...

A Tribute to Stephen Hawking

Yesterday, my wife and I saw The Theory of Everything , the story of Steven Hawking's rise from a socially awkward graduate student to a...

Harlan's Hawk

Harlan's hawk is a large, dark-plumaged buteo that breeds across Alaska and Northwest Canada.  Once considered a distinct species, this ...

Mount Pavlov Eruption

Mount Pavlov, 8560 feet, is a stratovolcano on the Alaskan Peninsula, some 600 miles southwest of Anchorage.  It formed within the last 10,0...

A Wintry Waterfowl Count

For the first monthly waterfowl count of the winter season, wintry conditions enveloped South Platte Park in Littleton, Colorado.  Following...

A Frigid Morning at Red Rocks

Red Rocks Park, in the foothills west of Denver, is best known for its outdoor, rock-walled amphitheater, which, over the years, has hosted ...

The Rosetta Mission & Climate Change

Today, ten years after its launch and at the end of a 4 billion mile journey, the Rosetta spacecraft successfully landed its Philae probe on...

Escape from the Frigid Upslope

Facing a cold, cloudy day with intermittent flurries (courtesy of this week's Polar Express), we and our guests escaped to the Western S...

Watching Winter Arrive

This morning dawned clear, sunny and mild along the Colorado Front Range.  Knowing that a potent cold front was on its way, we introduced ou...

Return of the Bark Birds

A pair of brown creepers returned to our central Missouri neighborhood this week and will be observed on occasion throughout the colder mont...

Water: Sculptor of the Earth

While plate tectonics rearranges the Continents, lifts mountain ranges and ignites volcanism, water sculpts the surface of Planet Earth.  Fa...

Africa's Aquatic Dinosaur

Last evening, NOVA , on PBS, focused on the discovery and evaluation of Spinosaurus fossils, the largest carnivorous dinosaur yet unearthed ...

The Anti-Science Coalition

Back when foresighted individuals such as Galileo and Copernicus led humanity toward scientific enlightenment, the Church condemned their th...

Anticipation on the Eastern Plain

Driving to Cincinnati today, I crossed the eastern portion of North America's Glaciated Plain, which stretches from western Illinois to ...

Migratory Woodpeckers

Mention migrant birds and most of us think of waterfowl, shorebirds, seabirds and a wide variety of songbirds; few would think to include wo...

Football Weather

As we move deeper into autumn, the term "football weather" is frequently heard.  In many cases, it is used to define unpleasant co...

Conservatives are Scary Enough

Driving across Kansas yesterday, I was repeatedly schooled on the Conservative message that, they hope, will give them control of the Senate...

First Winter Ducks

Yesterday morning, after the potent Colorado sun had warmed the cold night air, I headed down to South Platte Park to see if the rather slug...

Winter's First Punch

Following a mild October along the Colorado Front Range, the first significant cold front of the season pushed across the Rockies yesterday ...

Panic, Politics & Policy

Fear and panic over ebola have now been officially endorsed by the Governors of New York and New Jersey, who, no doubt, recognize the politi...

The Death of an Adversary

For the past five years or so, a large female raccoon has insisted on denning beneath one of the eaves of our Littleton, Colorado, house.  R...

The Rampart Range

The Rampart Range of Colorado stretches from the south side of Waterton Canyon, in southwest Metro Denver, to Colorado Springs.  North of th...

The Nature of Mutation

When cells (or sub-cellular agents such as viruses) replicate, there is a chance that the genetic material (DNA or RNA) that codes for the c...

Nature's Sweet Spot

Many if not most naturalists and "outdoors people" who live in the American Heartland would identify mid-late autumn as the best o...

Conceding Victory to Nature

Since moving to Columbia, Missouri in the late 1990s, we have watched as the Parks Department attempted to establish a prairie at Forum Natu...

River of Floods

Near the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, as the last of the Continental Ice Sheets was retreating into Canada, a massive lake of meltwater for...

First White-throats in Missouri

As our autumn colors begin to peak, I encountered the first white-throated sparrows of the season at the Fourm Nature Area, in Columbia.  As...

The Connecticut River

The Connecticut River, the largest and longest river in New England, rises in northernmost New Hampshire, just south of the Quebec border.  ...

Gonzalo rakes Bermuda

Forty million years ago, Bermuda, 640 miles ESE of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, was part of a volcanic island chain that towered above the...

October Splendor at Eagle Bluffs

It was a beautiful autumn morning at Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area on the Missouri River floodplain.  Under bright blue skies, fall colors ...

Trust & Healthcare

During my years as an academic Hospitalist and now as a volunteer educator, I have taught medical students and residents that trust is the m...

Life & Deaths

Threats such as ebola and terrorism are especially anxiety-provoking since we humans are well aware of our own mortality.  Indeed, as childr...

Spring in October

Here in the American Heartland, October is beloved for its sunny, mild days, crisp nights, colorful foliage and dry air.  We do not associat...

Orange is the new Green

Crossing the Great Plains in mid October, one finds that the verdant grasslands and cropfields have given way to a scenic landscape of orang...

Black Bears in Colorado

Black bears are common throughout the western 2/3 of Colorado, from the Front Range foothills to the western canyonlands.  Favoring elevatio...

Migrating Solitaires

Late this morning, my wife and I hiked around Hines Lake at Robert Eastman Park; this park is in southwest Metro Denver, near the foot of th...

October Birding at Chatfield

As I headed to Chatfield State Park this morning, rain clouds billowed above the Front Range foothills. Beneath the waning sunshine, the gol...

Gay Rights, Marriage & Divorce

The Supreme Court's decision not to address District Court rulings regarding gay marriage has reignited the rhetoric of conservative, ho...

Staunton State Park

Stretching across the south flank of Black Mountain, Staunton is one of the newest and most beautiful of Colorado's State Parks.  Backed...

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Attractive, energetic and aggressive, red-breasted nuthatches are permanent residents across southern Canada, the Pacific Northwest, New Eng...

Autumn at Deer Creek Canyon

Reflecting the bright October sun and stretching beneath a clear blue sky, Deer Creek Canyon Park was a riot of color yesterday morning.  In...

The Expendable Species

Throughout the first 120,000 years of human existence, we were just another species in natural ecosystems, moving about and subsisting via a...

Mingling Season

Cool, pleasant autumn weather has enveloped the Front Range cities and early fall colors adorn the South Platte Valley.  Though winter ducks...

A Belated Thanks to Jack Gottschang

We humans tend to look back on our lives, identifying individuals who, for better or for worse, had a significant influence on the career ch...

Sudden Entropy

Physics was never my strong suite but I seem to remember that entropy refers to disorder in the Universe (and to the natural tendency of tha...

Tragedy on Mount Ontake

Japan sits at the intersection of four major tectonic plates, making that country especially prone to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic act...