Every year I know that spring has arrived when it’s time for my family to forage for ramps on a two-acre patch on the hill above my house. We have just a few weeks to enjoy their spiciness before they disappear from the landscape, along with other spring ephemerals. While[Read More…]
Rachel Sargent Mirus
Crunching through a forest of needle ice
DUXBURY – On an early winter walk with my three-year-old in a local town forest, we heard our steps crunch on the frozen ground. The dirt of the trail had been pushed up on delicate columns of ice that looked like a pale sugar candy. “Why is it like ribbon[Read More…]
Finding the Pink Star Caterpillar
DUXBURY – When I imagine scientists discovering new animals, I picture them traveling to far-off jungles or remote mountaintops, not investigating local roadsides, utility cuts or other edge spaces of human habitation. Yet late last summer, naturalists with The Caterpillar Lab in Swanzey, N.H., found an unknown caterpillar on an[Read More…]
What Makes Blueberries Blue?
EAST CORINTH − Every summer I go blueberry picking and I notice the many colors of blueberries, from the luminous indigo of unpicked berries on a bush, which turn nearly black after handling, to the deep red-purple stain they leave on fingers and fabric. What makes these berries so colorful?[Read More…]
Mosquitoes in the Rain
WATERBURY – If you’re a mosquito and it’s a warm spring afternoon, you’re out cruising the air currents on your tiny wings. But as you buzz around, the sun warming your exoskeleton, the clouds roll in, heralding a spring shower. Balls of water up to 50 times heavier than your[Read More…]
Keeping Winter Coats Clean
DUXBURY – Standing on the berm of a small pond, I watch the resident beaver leave its lodge, a silhouetted nose moving through the water. It disappears briefly and returns with a branch in tow. The beaver clambers over the edge of its dam along a muddy path, branch bouncing[Read More…]
Petrichor is a Scent of Rocks and Rain
DUXBURY – When I hug my son after a day of fall bouldering, his hair smells of the sun-warmed rock we’ve been climbing over. It’s a distinctive odor, evocative of gray ledges and golden light returning after rain, and yet it’s not the rock I’m smelling, but tell-tale traces of[Read More…]
How Water Striders Manage Raindrops
DUXBURY – Water striders are a common sight on ponds, vernal pools, and puddles. During clear summer days, these insects seem to walk on water, a feat they accomplish through a combination of long legs that distribute their weight across the water’s surface and micro hairs that make these invertebrates[Read More…]
A New Discovery About Ancient Land Plants
DUXBURY – A long time ago, not so far away, freshwater plants partnered with fungi and moved onto land from lake and river shores. Since that time, land plants have evolved many sophisticated strategies for terrestrial life. Yet to this day, growing in damp forests and on foggy mountainsides, are[Read More…]
The Patchwork Life of the Brown Wasp Mantidfly
DUXBURY – Last July, I crossed paths with an insect that looked like the living embodiment of my favorite drawing game. Using folded paper, players add to a communal image without seeing previous contributions, such that the finished work is a surprise to everyone: the head of an eagle, on[Read More…]
