Breaking News

Nature

Monarch Butterflies, The GBBC

There’s good news from the mountains of central Mexico this winter. World Wildlife Fund Mexico and the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve announced on Jan. 30 that 14 overwintering monarch colonies occupied a total area of 14.9 acres, up from 6.1 acres last winter. Counts of individual butterflies are impossible because they are so small and many roost high in the oyamel fir trees. Instead areas occupied by the butterflies are measured. These are the best results since 2006-07 when monarchs occupied 17 acres of mountain forest. The low point over the last 25 years came in ...

No Two Are Alike

When I was working as an environmental educator in Syracuse, one of my all-time favorite programs to teach was all about a man named Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley. During our program we would teach first graders how as a boy little Willie Bentley loved snowflakes more than anything else in ...

Get To Know The Sparrows

Among birders, sparrows tend to be disrespected or at least ignored. Most are small, drab little brown birds. Brightly colored show stoppers such as yellow-throated warblers, Baltimore orioles, and scarlet tanagers usually steal the attention on spring bird walks. Sparrows are certainly more subtle visually, but there are usually quite a few species everywhere. The soon to be published Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America by Rick Wright (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 19, 2019) might change that, at least a little. Though Sparrows is lavishly illustrated with ...

Storm Water – Is It Just Water?

Storm water is just water, right? How could this be an environmental problem? Because it is not just water. Precipitation and dust deposit atmospheric pollutants on our parking lots, streets, roof tops and yards. In natural landscapes, most rainwater typically soaks into the ground, ...

Ripples In The Water

Have you ever tossed a pebble into a pond? Or a stick, or a pine cone… anything really. Those ripples that result continue to go out and out and out. And sometimes back in toward the point of origin. The ripple effect is the idea that one action, or word, emotion, event, and so on, can ...

Jumping Mice Hop Along Fields, Meadows

If during warmer weather you’ve ever seen what you thought was a miniature kangaroo hopping across a grassy field, you weren’t seeing things. It was a tiny rodent with huge hind feet and a long tail called a jumping mouse. I’ve only ever seen them while mowing trails through hayfields in the fall. Though their burnt orange fur is distinctive, it was their kangaroo-like hops across the path ahead of me that really caught my eye. The individuals I’ve seen were probably meadow jumping mice, but another species, the woodland jumping mouse, is also a possibility. Without ...