People have all kinds of rituals to celebrate life that I think animals would just find weird. There are weddings, where large groups come together to celebrate a couple getting together. Animals have more personal rituals, experienced only by the pair, sometimes for a moment, sometimes for a ...

In most climates around the world and across the seasons, some variety of fungus is found, from those as big as your head to the microscopically small. Around here, those that prefer to grow directly from the ground are likely waiting to pop up after the ground unfreezes, but many fungi that ...

Imagine Chautauqua County as a living, breathing entity, with water as its lifeblood. Just as our own health depends on a well-functioning immune system, the health of our waterbodies relies on the functioning of their surrounding watersheds. I like to think of this relationship between water ...

When I first started working at Audubon, people often talked about how Roger would have loved this or that. They talked about his passion and support for Audubon, and how much they missed him. As a new employee, I assumed that they were talking about a beloved volunteer that had passed and, ...

It has often been said amongst old hydrologists that the lake at the bottom of a watershed contains all that exists in that watershed - from the most distant ridge all the way down to lakeside gardens and lawns. A watershed is the basin-shaped piece of land with highpoints as its boundaries ...

Several years ago, I interned at an outdoor school in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Like much of California, it tended to be dry for most of the year, with a somewhat wetter late winter and early spring. While there, I spent most of my time as an educator leading ...