Season of Discovery

Naturalists and birders look forward to the cooler months of the year when large flocks of migrant cranes and waterfowl stop to rest and fee...

Caving to Big Oil

Despite the ecological disaster wrought by the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, five years ago, the effects of which have ...

A Riot of Life

In late April, wetlands across the Temperate Zone of North America harbor a riot of sound and color; the Garth Wetlands, in north Columbia, ...

Compost Bin West

A year after constructing a compost bin for our Missouri property, I have begun to build a larger one for our Littleton, Colorado, farm.  Wh...

April in the Foothills

April is an excellent month to visit the Montane Forest of the Front Range foothills.  Composed of open ponderosa pine parklands (on sunny, ...

The Laramie Basin

North of Ft. Collins, Colorado, US 287 angles northwest, climbing into the Front Range foothills.  It then turns northward, passing through ...

The Sixth Mass Extinction

Those who study the natural history of our planet have identified five mass extinctions since the dawn of the Paleozoic Era (see Earth's...

The Nature of Fjords

Fjords are steep-walled, U-shaped, glacial-carved coastal valleys.  Especially common along the rocky coasts of Norway, Iceland, Greenland, ...

Speed Birding

Most of our National Wildlife Refuges, Conservation Areas and large nature preserves are accessed by a network of graveled roads which permi...

The Unseen

On a visit to the Great Lakes Science Center, in Cleveland, we watched an Omni-Max production of National Geographic's Mysteries of the ...

The Healing Power of Nature

In the movie Wild (based on a memoir), a young woman hikes the Pacific Crest Trail in an effort to face her poor life choices, brought on b...

Into Raptor Country

Stepping outside yesterday morning, I was greeted by a snowy landscape, bright sunshine and, to my good fortune, the sight of a golden eagle...

A Second Try at Red Rocks

Two months ago, a friend and I endured single digit temperatures at Red Rocks Park, hoping to observe rosy finches and this winter's res...

Back on the Bay

Our Longboat Key condo sits on the west edge of Sarasota Bay, offering views of the open water as well as mangrove islands that rise offshor...

Leaving Winter

Our first road trip of the new year will take us from the wintry landscape of central Missouri to the warm, marine environment of southwest ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

Life in the Big City

After more than a week of exploring the spectacular landscapes and natural ecosystems of southern Quebec, we are back in Montreal, awaiting ...