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By BILL DANIELSON

It was the morning of April 16 and I was up early. It seems to be impossible for me to sleep late at this time of year because I am so excited about seeing the first birds of the season, but this particular morning was a little different. It was the...

By JOSHUA ROSE

A few months ago, headlines flared that Peter Kaestner had seen his 10,000th bird species. This could have been anticlimactic, as Kaestner has been renowned for years among birders for traveling worldwide and seeing more species than anyone.However,...

By BILL DANIELSON

It just so happens that I am a creature of habit and I always write my column on a Thursday. On this particular morning I find myself luxuriating in an unexpected, but most welcome, deviation from my normal routine. A huge winter storm has arrived and...

By BILL DANIELSON

As seems to be the case more and more often, March went out with a bang. And, in agreement with my assessment of the year from last week’s column, it seems only fitting that we experienced our most major winter storm of the season in what was...

By BILL DANIELSON

After a while, one learns what to expect with each month and each season. July is going to be hot and humid, October will be colorful and somewhat melancholy, January will be cold and sleepy, and then there is March. March is the month for which the...

By BILL DANIELSON

It was a rainy Sunday morning at the beginning of March and I was suffering from cabin fever. It hasn’t been a particularly cold winter, but I had been cooped up nonetheless. Saturday had gone by without incident, like so many Saturday’s since the new...

By BILL DANIELSON

Every week, rain or shine, winter or summer, I try to find something fun, interesting and positive to talk about in my column. This is actually an easy thing to do, but what can be somewhat problematic is finding a photo that will pair nicely with the...

By BILL DANIELSON

It was the end of a very long day, but, because of the increasing daylight that we have all been enjoying, it was still light out when I got home. I pulled up to the garage, but I had to get out to open the garage door because my door opener had died....

By BILL DANIELSON

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2023 was the warmest year ever recorded. I remember it being hot in the summertime, but I think the effect of this heat was most noticed by me in the autumn. The Thinking Chair...

By BILL DANIELSON

I receive emails from readers throughout the year and I do my best to respond to them in a timely manner. Sometimes messages pile up in my inbox and sometimes things get filed incorrectly, but I genuinely do try to respond to every one. This year (the...

By BILL DANIELSON

My selection of a writing topic is not always an easy thing. Sometimes I sit down to the keyboard and find myself completely stuck. I haven’t had an idea all week and at the last minute I still find myself with nothing to focus on. These are the...

By BILL DANIELSON

It appears as though winter has finally arrived. November and December (most of which is technically autumn) were very mild and all through the Christmas break the high temperatures were consistently above freezing. This resulted in little to no snow...

By BILL DANIELSON

Every winter I get a few emails from readers who want to know if it is normal to see American Robins in winter and every winter I send out responses that indicate that the presence of these birds is quite normal. I then go on to discuss various...

Wintertime in Massachusetts allows residents everywhere to begin their yearly ritual of feeding the birds. People love watching the many species of birds arriving at their feeders every winter. And in Shelburne, we especially love it when we see one...

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 JULIAN MENDOZA

GREENFIELD — Despite raptor rehabilitator Tom Ricardi receiving a bill that was more than five times what he expected for tree removal, repairs to his Conway sanctuary are well underway.Three enclosures at Ricardi’s Birds of Prey Rehabilitation Center...

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

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 JULIAN MENDOZA

CONWAY — Even those who are driven to help others sometimes need help. Just ask raptor rehabilitator Tom Ricardi, whose bird enclosures were recently ravaged by a fallen pine tree.According to Ricardi, the tree tore through one of the property’s cages...