By Katie Koerten
One of the botanical wonders I look forward to every spring is what many people consider a common weed: the stinging nettle. Despite being more homely than my favorite ephemeral wildflowers emerging at the same time — such as Dutchman’s breeches, bloodroot and hepatica — I anticipate this plant’s appearance with just as much excitement.
By David Spector
In the late winter or early spring I usually see my first wood duck of the year. “First of year,” the first individual of a species seen in a given calendar year, is a concept particularly important to those who keep year lists of species. Even for someone like me who does not keep such a record, the first spring sighting of an especially striking bird is noteworthy, and the wood duck is striking indeed.
By Elizabeth Farnsworth
When I lived in Holyoke many years ago, I always looked forward to the spectacle of the thawing ice on the Connecticut River each spring. When ice broke up and northern snows melted with the warming weather in March and April, a torrent of water would make its way downstream, transforming the normally placid Connecticut into a rowdy, roiling flood. Exciting? Absolutely. Scary? Floods certainly can be, but these annual deluges, known as freshets, were usually nicely contained, even as the river poured over its banks. That’s because the shoreline was graced — and braced — by a hardy floodplain forest.
By David Spector
When does spring begin? There are many answers. Changing day-length offers convenient dates for calendar makers: Days have been lengthening since the solstice in December, and they get longer most rapidly at the equinox in March. Some people split the difference and have spring start at Groundhog Day, roughly midway between solstice and equinox. Plants provide many markers of the new season of growth as well.
By Joshua Rose
The snow-covered ground stretches for acres around me. The bitterly cold wind makes my eyes water. I blink the water away so I can identify the birds in front of me, birds that breed in places like this — flat, treeless, cold places. They are tundra nesters: the snow bunting, the Lapland longspur, the American pipit, and the northern horned lark. But I am not in the tundra. I am in Hadley.
By Katie Koerten
Who says spring is the best time for birding? Sure, the arrival of the first red-winged blackbird or the first phoebe is always highly anticipated as the weather gets warmer and days longer. Sure, in the springtime you get colorful warblers (if you can spot them), warbling their complicated songs. But I say winter is just as much fun for us bird lovers, because it means the hope of winter finches — birds that reside in the northern tundra for the summer months, and occasionally migrate here to the northern United States when conditions are right.
By David Spector
A couple of decades ago, my camera and I went to a corn field near my home on Jan. 1. The field served as a setting for a gem of a maple tree that had been allowed to grow in the middle of the corn. On or near the first of each month for the rest of that year, I went to the same tree and took photographs documenting the changes in the tree and its surroundings. In October I also went mid-month, in an attempt to get an image of the tree at its most colorful.
By Ted Watt
As the cold temperatures and snows of winter approach I treasure those of our plants that stay green into December and through the winter: trailing arbutus, maidenhair spleenwort, checkerberry, wolf’s claw clubmoss, marginal wood fern, partridge berry, downy rattlesnake plantain, climbing fern and others. There are quite a number when you go out searching.
By Elizabeth Farnsworth
“Ack, there’s another one!” I exclaim, as I reach for the rather homely and lethargic brown bug clinging to my bathroom mirror. You probably know of what bug I speak: the reddish-brown, ¾-inch-long insect with long, flanged legs, antennae to match, and a boxy, somewhat flattened body. The one that, when you squish it or attempt to usher it politely outdoors, emits a strong odor of new-mown grass soaked in Pine-Sol. This species is one of many insects trying to carve out a cozy niche for itself so it can survive the winter. You may be encountering this and a few other unwanted roommates as you batten down the hatches for the cold months. Let’s learn about a few of our new tiny tenants.
By Katie Koerten
Human beings innately organize and categorize the world around them. Toddlers and adults alike want to know the names of the people and creatures they encounter. When you spot an unfamiliar bird, the immediate question is “What kind of bird is that?” The desire to assign names to things is arguably part of what makes us human.
Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
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