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“Squirrels have been criticized for hiding nuts in various places for future use and then forgetting the places. Well, squirrels do not bother with minor details like that. They have other things on their mind, such as hiding more nuts where they can’t find them.”
Unfortunately, that succulent passage was penned in 1949 by W. Cuppy in his book How To Attract A Wombat. I say unfortunately because I wanted to write it first, but was unable to get born in time. The trade-off, which is that I got to be a lot younger than him, probably worked out for the best anyway. » Continue Reading.
A few years ago, I started an observational experiment in forest succession on a couple of acres where we once pastured sheep and goats. Rocky and wet, without livestock it was hard to keep cleared. So, I let the forest recreate itself and just watched the process unfold.
A few Thanksgivings ago, my then-ten-year-old daughter and I went for an afternoon stroll. Unseasonably warm weather made for a longer than planned walk through a power line right-of-way and on down through steeply sloping woods to the Winooski River. As we moved through the tall scrub, Lauren’s interest was drawn to the golf ball-sized swellings on desiccated goldenrod stalks.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has urged outdoor adventurers to suspend exploration of cave and mine sites that may serve as seasonal homes for hibernating bats. Human disturbances are especially harmful to the State’s bat population since the arrival of the disease known as white-nose syndrome, which has killed more than 90 percent of bats at hibernation sites in New York.
Every so often, my friend David texts me a picture of roadkill. A fisher trailing a single strand of blood-red sinew. A wind-roused pile of porcupine quills. A bobcat in graceful, permanent repose. One year, he built extra time into his schedule so he could stop to document every carcass on his daily commute – 40 critters in all, not including salamanders, snakes, and myriad other wildlife too small to be seen from a moving vehicle.
This August, the emerald ash borer (EAB) was confirmed in both St. Lawrence and Franklin counties. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), and NYS Agriculture and Markets will hold a class on EAB on November 1, 2017 from 5:45 to 8 pm at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Learning Farm, 2043 State Route 68, Canton. 
Applications are being accepted for the Warren County Master Gardener Training Program, which will begin in January 2018. The program is open to anyone who has an interest in expanding their gardening experience and knowledge.
The woolly bear caterpillar is the larval stage of the Isabella tiger moth, Pyrrharctia Isabella. The Isabella tiger moth overwinters in the larval stage. In the fall, caterpillars seek shelter under leaf litter or other protected places. They eat mostly weeds, including dandelion, clover, and grasses. Woolly bears are relative speedsters in the caterpillar world, crawling at a neck-snapping .05 miles an hour, or about a mile a day.
New York Sea Grant was among the nearly 130 federal, state and provincial governments; industry; NGOs; and academic entities that participated in the 2017 Crude Move Symposium addressing the economics, risks, and hazards of crude oil transport through such waters as the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River system and the Gulf of Mexico.
Call it an infection or an epidemic, but even the most docile and pleasant woods will soon be transformed into Fangorn Forest. As far as anyone knows, local trees will probably not become animate like the ones in the fictional woodland of J.R.R. Tolkein’s trilogy. However, they may be just as dangerous, only for a different reason.
The fields around our home are something of a bear buffet from mid-summer through fall: wild blueberries in July followed by blackberries, then apples come September, with beechnuts falling from the trees skirting the mown area. In our 13 years here, we’ve seen a mother bear noshing on fallen apples while her cubs scampered around in the tree above her, heard bears climbing and snapping the occasional apple branch while we lay in tents 20 yards away during a backyard campout, and even witnessed two cubs playing in our kids’ sandbox.
The Whallonsburg Grange Hall will host a lecture by scientist, educator, and author Dr. Curt Stager on Sunday, October 29 at 3 pm. The Paul Smiths College professor will be speaking on “Leaving a Trace: Humans in the Adirondacks,” the final lecture in the fall Lyceum series “What’s the Big Idea?” Dr. Stager will be discussing his own research and the growing body of evidence about early habitation in the region – evidence that shows that human roots run deeper in the Adirondacks than those of the forest itself. 
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