December Gleanings

By Bryan on December 19, 2013

On the road writing, I’ll offer a few recent discoveries:

• The New York Times offers a fine account of the recent Monarch butterfly decline – and potential for a comeback.
• Aeon Magazine is an online source for long-form journalism on nature and the human condition. Note David Dobbs‘ recent (and controversial) dispatch about bidding farewell (sort of) to Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene.
• The December eNews from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (for which I write and edit now and then) features snowy owls, vernal pools, bumblebees and peregrine falcons.
• The 2014 gathering of the Northeast chapter of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas will be in Binghamton, NY, from June 26-29, 2014. Here’s your chance to join me and other experts in rivers, ponds and wetlands in hot pursuit dragonflies and damselflies.
• I only saw two Snowy Owls during the famed Montauk, NY, Christmas bird count last weekend (one of which is below). We found a total of 11 on that count, a mere 290 fewer than what Bruce Mactavish and Co. recently encountered on Newfoundland.