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By BILL DANIELSON

Although summer has only really just begun it feels like “deep summer” has already arrived. We already have the heat and the humidity and the almost daily threats of thunderstorms, but if you go out into nature and use your eyes and ears, then it...

By BILL DANIELSON

Attention one and all: that special time of year has arrived. Finally, after a long, long school year, teachers are subjected to their annual, involuntary, two-month unpaid furlough. I have already managed to catch up on some desperately needed sleep...

By BILL DANIELSON

I live on one of those quiet country roads that feels like it’s off in the middle of nowhere. To the east of my house there is a stop sign at a 4-way intersection of similarly quiet country roads, one of which is a dead end. To the west there is...

By BILL DANIELSON

For me, the light is now at the end of the tunnel. The school year is about to conclude and I find myself utterly and thoroughly exhausted. I am now running on fumes; almost completely spent. I am looking forward to my mandatory unpaid furlough and...

By BILL DANIELSON

I don’t know if this has been a problem for you, but for most of this spring I have been having trouble getting the “feel” of things. The weather has been very odd and I can’t seem to tell if we are stuck in a perpetual cycle of early April, or if we...

By BILL DANIELSON

Happy Memorial Day everybody! I hope today finds you happy and healthy at home with a little extra time on your hands to sit and contemplate life. So many people have given so much so that we might enjoy the comforts of life in a stable country and we...

By BILL DANIELSON

It was the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend and I was visiting my parents to celebrate the big day. I had arrived on Friday afternoon, gone out for a wonderful dinner and returned to the old homestead where, for some reason, we all decided to stay up...

By BILL DANIELSON

To celebrate our anniversary, my beautiful wife Susan and I decided to spend the first weekend of May in Newport, Rhode Island. This is where we were staying when I proposed to her and every now and then we like to head back to the scene of the crime...

By BILL DANIELSON

Three or four times last week I noticed an enormous raccoon on my deck in the moments just before dawn. This was clearly a raccoon that was scrounging for any scraps left over from the meal that I had set out for the birds the evening before and I...

By BILL DANIELSON

It was Wednesday afternoon of last week and I had just returned home from a long day at work. I spent most of the drive home pondering the topic of this week’s column and reflecting on just how tired and worn out I felt. By the time I pulled down my...

By BILL DANIELSON

It was the Friday of my spring break week and the weather had finally improved. The previous weekend had been beautiful with record-setting high temperatures, but I had been fortunate enough to pick up a case of strep throat from one of my students...

By BILL DANIELSON

I am sure that some of you may have looked at today’s photo and thought, “That’s not a plant.” I know that I had made a New Year’s resolution to focus more attention on plants this year, but Nature herself threw me a curveball when this gorgeous male...

By BILL DANIELSON

My office is located in a loft above the main room of my house. The ceiling is basically the same shape as the roof and if I reach up from my chair I can touch the wood that separates me from the outside. As I sit here in the early morning hours,...

By BILL DANIELSON

As the days continue to lengthen and the birds outside start ramping up their activities for the breeding season it is time for some of our resident species to start house hunting. A large number of the species that we see at our wintertime feeders...

By BILL DANIELSON

One thing that I must remember to be mindful of is that my readers live in different places. Some weather events can be quite localized and others express themselves in different ways depending on latitude and elevation. Thus, what happens in...

By BILL DANIELSON

In the year 1500, just a blink of an eye before Europeans started migrating into North America in large numbers, the ecology of the “New World” was relatively stable. Forests of various types dominated the eastern third of the continent, forests of...

By BILL DANIELSON

So far, this winter has been remarkably average. Some areas might be a little low on snowfall levels, but the temperature has been about average for most days. I’d say it has been a cloudy, gray winter, but nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to...

By BILL DANIELSON

We’ve reached that point in the school year when my biology students have learned about Gregor Mendel, his experiments with pea plants and the general concepts of genes and heredity. We’ve also taken a look at the structures and basic functions of DNA...

By BILL DANIELSON

One of the things I really like about the beginning of any calendar year is the delightful process of beginning new lists. I keep track of all sorts of things, from bird sightings, to temperature readings, to the blooming dates of flowers, but the one...

By BILL DANIELSON

In last week’s column, I featured the American red squirrel and I shared a photo of one of these rascals solving the puzzle of one of my birdfeeders. “How, do I get those peanuts?” it must have wondered and in relatively short order it managed to get...