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By BILL DANIELSON

As the days begin to lengthen, I find myself wistfully looking out the window of my car and watching the forests go by as I drive to work. The prolonged period of warmer-than-average weather that we have experienced this winter has also left the...

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...

By BILL DANIELSON

Friends, Romans, birders, lend me your ears. I am delighted to say that I am back from a horrible experience with kidney stones. It started off, rather innocently, as a slight pain in my back that I couldn’t quite account for, but as time progressed I...

By BILL DANIELSON

I have no idea how many photos exist in my personal collection, nor, I am afraid, will I ever know. I can say (definitively) that in the past 6 years I have taken exactly 104,308 photos, but that is where “exact” comes to a close. My records prior to...

By BILL DANIELSON

In keeping with my New Years resolution to focus some more attention on the plants that live around us I decided to look for a list that I was convinced must exist somewhere. You see, I am a compulsive list-maker. The blood of a scientist runs through...

By BILL DANIELSON

For the past couple weeks I have found myself grumbling during my mornings at the kitchen window.For some reason my yard has become popular with a flock of house sparrows (Passer domesticus) and I am not at all pleased. The house sparrow is an...

By BILL DANIELSON

Welcome to 2023! Another calendar has been used, another red journal finished and safely tucked away on a shelf and newness has taken over. I place a brand new desk blotter calendar on my office desk, I unwrap a brand new red journal and begin to...

By BILL DANIELSON

Happy Memorial Day everyone!  If I could have one wish for you on this day, it would be that you are able to spend some quiet time sitting outside on a beautiful morning in a place filled with birds. Perhaps that means you are sitting in the backyard...

By BILL DANIELSON

Last week, I started a two-part segment on woodpeckers. I took a look at the northern flicker, which is a bird that is somewhat uncommon in our area during the winter months. This is because flickers like to eat ants and they like to look for them on...

By BILL DANIELSON

Most of my wildlife adventures occur outside. The fields, forests, rivers, ponds and meadows of the area have provided me with an endless supply of ideas and topics for discussion and I have relied on that sort of diversity for the entirety of my...

By BILL DANIELSON

I’ve started my morning commute to work again, and for the past week, I’ve been listening to the daily weather summary on NPR. Covering a wide area of southern New England, this rundown of atmospheric conditions and regional statistics is always very...

By BILL DANIELSON

In 1985, the piping plover (Charadrius melodus) was granted protected status under the Endangered Species Act. To make a very long story short, a species that had thrived along the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada for hundreds of...

By BILL DANIELSON

A lifetime of learning about birds has given me a fairly respectable database of knowledge between my ears. Time is the real key to this sort of learning, but opportunity can be just as important. I live in the Temperate Zone well inland from the...

By BILL DANIELSON

I realize now that I got so swept up by the fact that I had set a new personal birding record for the month of November that I completely forgot I was in the middle of a series on sparrow identification. I was all set to culminate the series with the...

By BILL DANIELSON

September is that time of year when students in the United States go back to school. It is a predictable percussion point in the rhythm of American life, and it sets the tempo of many people’s lives for the following 10 months. As a teacher who...

By BILL DANIELSON

This year has been an odd one. With the political circus unfolding around us every day, the recent revelations about the misbehavior of so many men and with the international climate such as it is, there has been little to cheer for this year. Still,...

By BILL DANIELSON

I approached the small pond as quietly as I could. This was relatively easy because of the mowed grass trail, but I still wanted to make sure that I didn’t spook any interesting creature that might be feeding or relaxing near the water. Too many times...

By BILL DANIELSON

As is the case every winter, the arrival of cold weather has me headed out to the woodpile on a regular basis. The weather has been generally warm this fall, but the Thanksgiving holiday brought family to visit, and some were not used to the cooler...