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New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the four top winners of DEC’s annual I Bird NY challenges for beginner and experienced birders.
DEC announced the annual I Bird NY Beginner’s Birding Challenge in May and encouraged children 16 years of age and younger to identify 10 common New York bird species. DEC also offered the I Bird NY Experienced Birder Challenge, requiring birders of all ages to identify at least 10 of 50 listed bird species found across New York State.
The Village Mercantile (formerly The Community Store) in Saranac Lake is set to host Adirondack Raptor proprietor Mark Manske for a book signing and a meet and greet with one of his owls on Saturday, December 21 from noon until 2 pm.
British soldier lichens are among the first wild things I remember being able to identify as a child. I loved spotting this lichen during forays into the woods – on a giant boulder or atop a decaying stump – its tiny, bright red caps seemed whimsical and somehow happy. I still love to find British soldiers, and they offer a welcome pop of color, especially during these days when the landscape is muted.
Secrets hidden in more than 300,000 index cards with hand-written information about 
I fall in love easy. I’ve been mad about river otters and star-nosed moles, and of course the venomous short-tailed shrew. But my first love was a creature that is almost mythical, a shadow lingering on the edges of time. There wasn’t much of it, merely bones, teeth, scraps of hair, and an occasional breathtaking tusk. Yet Mammuthus primigenius, the woolly mammoth, was (literally) my biggest love.
After pairing up and raising chicks, males and females of some 
Woolly bear caterpillars seem to be everywhere these days – creeping across the lawn, along the road when I’m walking the dog, hidden in the wilted cut-back of the perennial garden. Last week I found a woolly bear curled up in a shoe I’d left on the front porch.
Furbearer 
In light of recent news about the net loss of 
Two new scientific studies recently released by Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute (
Last year, I showed up to work on October 31 in one of my old park ranger’s uniforms, torn to fake-bloody shreds in an imaginary bear attack. One year earlier, I drank smoothies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because, ironically, my prosthetic vampire fangs were too fragile to sink into solid food. As a twentysomething undertaking a year of national service, I once asked my supervisor if I couldn’t make a few small modifications to my uniform and come to work on the last day of October as an “AmeriCorpse.” (He said no.)
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced that emerald ash borer (
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