Old buddy Tom White — known to many as an affable Northfield potter, avid hunter/naturalist and plain old nice guy — phoned Monday morning. Though I missed his call, he left a message and we hooked up later that afternoon. Always monitoring wildlife around his rustic home and studio, where his domestic turkeys have been […]

Damp, cool air, corn snow, puddles in meadow depressions, treacherous ice booby-trapping nighttime, backyard paths — all signs that spring is creeping in. Plus, just Tuesday morning, taking out a fresh pailful of ash and embers from my woodstove, a crimson cardinal was perched in an ornamental cherry singing his happy tune, an even better […]

Winter is a time of random opportunity and peril in the wild kingdom, two realities that are vividly displayed by two reader correspondents who sent photos to my home last week. The first photos arrived a week ago by snail-mail, displaying a big, live, hungry bear. The others came by email and showed a dead, […]

A blue, super moon in the midnight sky can stir thoughts to the surface, spin a man off to pondering …  especially Cancer moon children like me. Enter a topic I’ve been exploring in recent days, one focused on our government and its approach to the air, the water, the forests and wetlands. The prevailing […]

It wasn’t expected. In fact, I was surprised … before I tossed it around and thought it out. Oh yeah. That’s right. I forgot. Animals can’t reason. Hmmmm, really? Well, believe what you will. Myself, I have other views, give animals more credit than that, am convinced they are capable of thinking, understanding and forming […]

By the time this column hits the street, the snow will be falling and I’ll probably be suspended in anxiety about throwing another pulley from the snowblower mounted to my John Deere tractor. Just Wednesday, my friend and I replaced the one I found on the ground after the last storm cleanup. With two more […]

What better way to traipse off to my annual December vacation than by telling a Thanksgiving tale – one about a Warwick hunter-gatherer family with a freezerful of healthy game-meat before the first shot of the Massachusetts shotgun deer hunting season is fired? Yes, that long passed Harvest Moon in the midnight sky smiled favorably […]