Q: My husband was excited recently because he witnessed a robin building a nest by recycling a shed skin from a snake that lives at the foundation of our house. We’re not sure exactly what kind of snake. He’s three feet long and darkish but is...
The leopard is the most graceful of Africa’s potentially deadly creatures and is feared throughout the continent. They do not consider humans to be special, aside from their being easy prey that don’t bite or scratch and can’t even run...
A gratifying sign that spring has finally arrived fluttered around my face last week before landing on my shoulder as I sat alongside a woodland creek. Male tiger swallowtails are always a spectacular yellow with black wing stripes. This one wanted me to be...
Environmental forecasts and reports are all too often full of grimness and gloom. But ecology has its lighter moments, and we should remember them, as I do – a memorable field trip when I was teaching a herpetology class.
When I left for Africa, stories in the U.S. media were reporting Bigfoot sightings in Oregon, Alaska and even Connecticut. Among the questions I have about Bigfoot is why one never gets accidentally shot during hunting season the way hunters and dogs do.
Is the GEICO gecko anatomically correct? Is it really speaking in an Australian accent? What kind of gecko is it modeled after? The answers to these questions and many others can be found in “Geckos: The Animal Answer Guide” by Aaron Bauer...
You need not look far on conservation websites to find that this species or that is headed toward extinction because of human activities. Nonetheless, millions of species have gone extinct naturally, so it is not always our fault. A column I wrote several...
Awhile back I asked, what if the average human life span were a thousand years instead of less than a hundred? Would our environmental attitudes be any different? Or what if carnivorous dinosaurs roamed our neighborhoods? Or what if insects reached body sizes...
Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson have all been linked to the holiday now known as Presidents’ Day because of their unparalleled contributions to the country. Suppose we identified U.S. presidents based on their positive impacts on the...
The Haleakala silversword plant grows only on the top of Haleakala volcano in Maui. Of the diverse array of plants I saw in the Hawaiian Islands, silverswords were one of the few native plants living in their natural habitat. Most species of plants and...
The Hawaiian goose, or nene (pronounced “nay nay”), is the state bird of Hawaii. In the 1950s only slightly more than two dozen were in existence. Today, thanks to recovery plans of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the total number of nenes...
Duck breeding season in the southern United States typically begins by February, at the same time that legal duck hunting ends. This came as a relief to my neighbor’s 9-year-old son whose pet duck had disappeared. He feared it might be flying into a...
